James Grainger (c.1721–1766) Scottish doctor, poet and translator, is well-known figure in 18th century English literature. Grainger graduated in medicine from the University of Edinburgh in 1753. He is best known for his poem "Sugar-Cane" (1764). He lived in St. Kitts from 1759 on. [1]
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James Grainger was born about 1721 in Duns, Berwickshire in southeast Scotland, the son of a tax collector. Grainger studied medicine in Edinburgh, served as military surgeon between 1745 and 1748 and settled in practice in London, where he became the friend of Dr. Johnson, Shenstone, and other authors. His first poem, "Solitude", appeared in 1755. He subsequently went to the West Indies (St. Kitts), where he married. In 1764, James Grainger published Essay on the more common West-India Diseases, first work from the anglophone Caribbean devoted to the diseases and treatment of slaves. A self-taught Latinist, Grainger published translations of classical Latin poems, the most notable being the Elegies of Tibullus. The poem "Sugar-Cane" remains one of the best descriptions of working life on an eighteenth-century sugar plantation.