GROSS, CHARLES

GROSS, CHARLES (1857–1909), U.S. historian. Born and educated in Troy, N.Y., Gross continued his studies in Europe. His doctoral dissertation was expanded into a classic two-volume work, The Gild Merchant (1890). In 1888 he was appointed an instructor at Harvard, and he was made a full professor in 1901. Gross took an active part in Jewish life. At the Anglo-Jewish Exhibition in London in 1887, he lectured on "The Exchequer of the Jews in England in the Middle Ages." In 1893 he translated into English Kayserling's volume on Christopher Columbus and the Jews. He was also vice president and a charter member of the American Jewish Historical Society. Among his most important works: Select Cases from the Coroner's Rolls, 1265–1413 (1896), and Select Cases Concerning the Law Merchant, A.D. 1270–1638 (1908–32), both of which he edited for the Selden Society; Bibliography of British Municipal History (1897); and The Sources and Literature of English History from the Earliest Time to about 1485 (1900, 19152, 1951). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Jacobs, in: AJHSP, 19 (1910), 189–93. (Howard L. Adelson)