John Harris (writer)

thumb|Engraving of John Harris, the frontispiece of Lexicon Technicum

John Harris (c. 1666 – 7 September 1719) was an English writer, scientist, and Anglican priest. He is best known as the editor of the Lexicon Technicum: Or, A Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1704), the earliest of the English encyclopaedias; as the compiler of the Complete Collection of Voyages and Travels (1744), published under his name; and as the author of an unfinished county history of Kent.

Life

Harris was born about 1666, probably in Shropshire, and was a scholar of Trinity College, Oxford, from 1684 to 1688. He was presented to the vicarage of Icklesham in Sussex, and subsequently to the rectory of St Thomas, Winchelsea. which included the very first description of a bdelloid rotifer.

In 1698 he gave the seventh series of the Boyle Lectures, Atheistical Objections against the Being of God and His Attributes fairly considered and fully refuted.