Pierre-Jean Grosley (Troyes, 18 November 1718 – Troyes, 4 November 1785) was a French man of letters, local historian, travel writer and observer of social mores in theAge of Enlightenment and a contributor to theEncyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers.[1]
Grosley was a magistrate in his nativeTroyes, where he had plenty of opportunity to hear the local dialect, which he described in a paper (1761).[2] At the time of his death he was engaged in publishingMémoires historiques et critiques pour l'histoire de Troyes ("Historic and critical notes for the history of Troyes") of which only the first complete volume was printed (Paris 1774).[3]
Grosley accumulated some medieval manuscripts in the course of his researches. A manuscript of thechanson de gesteGarin le Loherain with Garey's inscription was part of thePhillipps collection and is now conserved in theBancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.[4]
Following his sojourn in Italy as the military administrator of themaréchal de Maillebois during theWar of Austrian Succession, he published hisObservations sur l'Italie et les Italiens.
He came in second in the competition ordered by the Académie de Dijon in 1750, which was won byJean-Jacques Rousseau with hisDiscours sur les sciences et les arts. In 1752 he published hisRecherches pour servir à l'histoire du droit françois; the essay, maintaining theGaulish origin of French customary law, is divided in three sections: the first presents arguments to show that Gaul was leastRomanised in the north; the second that French customs did not have their origins in the anarchic feudal conditions of the tenth and eleventh centuries; the third, that theRoman law did not prevail north of theLoire.[5]
Grosley was elected an associate of theAcadémie royale des inscriptions et belles-lettres in 1761.
Following a year in London in 1765 he produced tart observations on the English style of life, with critical attention to the telling details that revealed for him the English character. HisLondres (Neuchâtel 1770), was translated by Thomas Nugent and published in 2 volumes byLockyer Davis in 1772 under the titleA Tour to London; Or New Observations on England and its Inhabitants, by M. Grosley. It was read with pleasure by the English themselves. Like the London view ofWilliam Hogarth or the London Diary of that inveterate slummerJames Boswell,[6] Grosley presents a wry and satirical series of portraits of London street life from the fashionable walkers in a rainy, soot-ladenSt. James's Park to the bizarre holiday capers of butchers' boys and milkmaids. Among other things it contained the first published mention of that English invention, thesandwich. In 1766 Grosley was elected aFellow of the Royal Society.[7]
Grosley was a contributor to volumes IV and XIV of theEncyclopédie ofDiderot andd'Alembert. HisNew Observations on Italy and its Inhabitants was published in London, 1764.
Francesca Wilson wrongly referred to him inStrange Island (1955) as Jean-Paul Grosley, and Nikolaus Pevsner repeated this error in the published text of his Reith Lectures,The Englishness of English Art (1956).
In Troyes, rue Pierre-Jean-Grosley commemorates his name.
Grosley a publié une foule d'autres travaux biographiques, littéraires et historiques, dont une partie est insérée dans les journaux du temps.
