Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Jane Taylor
-
Standard Name: Taylor, Jane
Birth Name: Jane Taylor
Nickname: Jenny
Pseudonym: Q. Q.
JT
, a writer of poems for children when she was little more than a child herself, saw herself in adulthood as first and foremost a Christian writer, seeking to change the lives of her readers, adults as well as the young. Her poems and fictions are vividly inventive: she creates animal characters which comically mirror and illuminate human characteristics, as well as thumb-nail sketches of ordinary people whose moral and psychological quirks (not only failings) are vividly realised. Her skill in dialogue and scenes of everyday social interaction matches that in character-study. In a family where all were writers, her siblings recognised that she was the outstanding talent. In most generations since her death one or two serious critical voices have been heard in her praise, while the general or popular idea of her has been that of merely a pious writer for children.
The heading supplied for Sylvia Bowerbank
's fine entry on her in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is children's writer.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
In the recent re-evaluation of women's writing, JT
has her champions, notably critic Stuart Curran
.
"Jane Taylor" Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Taylor_Family_(Martin_Taylor;_Ann_Taylor;_Jefferys_Taylor;_Isaac_Taylor;_Isaac_Taylor;_Jane_Taylor;_Ann_Taylor)_by_Isaac_Taylor.jpg#/media/File:The_Taylor_Family_(Martin_Taylor;_Ann_Taylor;_Jefferys_Taylor;_Isaac_Taylor;_Isaac_Taylor;_Jane_Taylor;_Ann_Taylor)_by_Isaac_Taylor.jpg.
Having borne and educated a remarkable family of precocious authors, AMT
followed her daughters Ann
and Jane
and her son Isaac
into print in 1814, and produced a series of conduct books and a volume...
Author summary
Ann Taylor Gilbert
ATG
, her next sister and two brothers, wrote and published seventy-three books. The first and most famous title appeared in 1804-5. Most of these works were collaboratively authored in various combinations. They were mainly...
Publishing
Lucy Walford
LW
's lives of Jane Taylor
, Elizabeth Fry
, Hannah More
, and Mary Somerville
, each originally printed in Blackwood's Magazine, appeared together as Four Biographies from Blackwood in Edinburgh and London.
Darton and Harvey
, replying to an enquiry about printing what became Original Poems for Infant Minds, offered the Taylorfamilya suitable return in cash or in books.
qtd. in
Gilbert, Ann Taylor. Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs. Gilbert. Editor Gilbert, Josiah, H. S. King, 1874, 2 vols., http://U of A, HSS Ruth N .
1: 164
The response: Books...
Publishing
Sarah Tytler
ST
found in J. A. Froude
of Fraser's Magazine a very agreeable editor who gave his contributors a free hand, was sympathetic, could pay a cordial compliment, while such criticism as he offered was gentle...
Publishing
Ann Taylor Gilbert
Ann
and Jane Taylor
's satirical Signor Topsy-Turvy's Wonderful Magic Lantern; or, The World Turned Upside Down was published with their brother Isaac
's illustrations.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Residence
Ann Taylor Gilbert
Ann
and Jane Taylor
left their childhood home at Lavenham in Suffolk, to move with their family to Colchester in Essex, where their father
became a dissenting minister.
Gilbert, Ann Taylor. Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs. Gilbert. Editor Gilbert, Josiah, H. S. King, 1874, 2 vols., http://U of A, HSS Ruth N .
1: 86
Armitage, Doris Mary. The Taylors of Ongar. W. Heffer and Sons, 1939.
34
Residence
Ann Taylor Gilbert
The Taylor family (including Ann
and Jane
) left Colchester for Ongar in Essex (a place lastingly associated with their name).
Armitage, Doris Mary. The Taylors of Ongar. W. Heffer and Sons, 1939.
53-4
Gilbert, Ann Taylor. Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs. Gilbert. Editor Gilbert, Josiah, H. S. King, 1874, 2 vols., http://U of A, HSS Ruth N .
1: 192
Residence
Ann Taylor Gilbert
Ann Taylor (later ATG
) and her sister
Jane, still very young, left London with their parents for Lavenham in Suffolk.
Gilbert, Ann Taylor. Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs. Gilbert. Editor Gilbert, Josiah, H. S. King, 1874, 2 vols., http://U of A, HSS Ruth N .
1: 18
Textual Features
Ann Taylor Gilbert
The poems include a pair entitled To a Sister, written by Ann
and Jane
. (Ann wrote first.)
Armitage, Doris Mary. The Taylors of Ongar. W. Heffer and Sons, 1939.
234
Textual Features
Susanna Watts
The title-page quotes Pope
, who also (with his Messiah) stands first among the contents. Some pieces are unascribed; others are by Byron
(The Isles of Greece), Jane Taylor
(The Squire's...
Textual Features
Susanna Watts
Ephemera of all kinds have been bound in: family anecdotes, a letter of William Cowper
of 1788, a Hindu Primer (or alphabet), a railway ticket of 1839, women's parliamentary petitions against slavery of 1833 (one...
Textual Features
Sarah Trimmer
In addition to Catharine Cappe
's work on Sunday schools and versions of fairy stories by Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy
, the magazine reviewed work by a whole library of didactic, pedagogical, or improving writers, reprinted as...
Textual Features
Mary Ann Cavendish Bradshaw
There follows a fighting critical Dissertation Respecting Patrons and Dedications, which covers the issues of male disrespect for female authors, the tyranny of critics, and over-insistence on moral instruction (with Hannah More
's Coelebs...
Textual Production
Kate Greenaway
Throughout the 1880s KG
illustrated many little books by well-known authors. In 1883 she provided illustrations for Little Ann and Other Poems, a collection by the early nineteenth-century children's writers Ann (later Gilbert)
and...
