John Ranby

John Ranby (1743–1820) was an English pamphleteer, known for his anti-abolitionist writings. James Boswell interpolated in his Life of Johnson a reference to Ranby, his "learned and ingenious friend", as a pendant to Samuel Johnson's expressed wish for the abolition of slavery, stating that Johnson was poorly informed.

Life Born George Osborne, he was an illegitimate son of John Ranby the surgeon. He took the surname Ranby by royal licence, in 1756. He was brought up with his sister Hannah, born in 1740, in a house in Chiswick, with his father's friend William Hogarth as a neighbour. Their mother died in 1746. Hannah married the Member of Parliament Walter Waring in 1758.

Ranby was at school at Eton College, and then a student at Trinity College, Cambridge which he entered in 1761, as George Ranby. Not taking a degree, he entered Lincoln's Inn in 1762. He stated that he knew Richard Watson at Cambridge. In 1763 he was a supporter of John Wilkes. In later life he resided first at Woodford in Essex, where he befriended Thomas Maurice the orientalist, and then at Bury St Edmunds, where he died on 31 March 1820. He was buried at Brent Eleigh in Suffolk, where there was a monument to him and his wife.

In 1794, during the early part of the French Revolutionary Wars, Ranby in his Short Hints on a French Invasion deprecated a general tendency to panic.

Three years later Ranby supported Bishop Richard Watson in his controversy with Gilbert Wakefield. In 1811 he attempted to undermine a Whig watchword in An Enquiry into the Supposed Increase of the Influence of the Crown.

Family Ranby married Mary, daughter of Edward Goate and his wife Mary Barnardiston, who was sister of Thomas Barnardiston. She died on 3 January 1814.