RACK, EDMUND, a person well known in the literary world by his attachment to, and promotion of, agricultural knowledge: he was a native of Norfolk, a Quaker. His education was common, and he was apprenticed originally to a shopkeeper: his society was select in this situation, and by improving himself in learning, his conversation was enjoyed by a respectable acquaintance. He wrote many essays, poems, and letters, and some few controversial tracts. At length he settled, about his 40th year, at Bath in 1775, and was soon introduced to the most eminent literati of that place, among whom Dr Wilson and Mrs Macaulay highly esteemed him for his integrity and abilities. In 1777 he published Mentor's Letters, a moral work, which has run through many editions. But this year he gained great celebrity by his plan of an agricultural society, which was soon adopted by four counties. He still further advanced his fame by his papers in the Farmer's Magazine, and his communications in the Bath Society's papers; a work remarkable for its ingenuity and spirit. His last engagement was in the History of Somersetshire, where the topographical parochial surveys were his. This work, in 3 vols 4to, was published in 1791, by his colleague the Reverend Mr Collinson. —Mr Rack died of an asthma in February 1787, aged 52.