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.
Ann
and Jane Taylor
's Rhymes for the Nursery was published, as by the Authors of Original Poems.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
3d ser. 8 (1806): 440
Textual Production
Ann Taylor Gilbert
The reading-book Limed Twigs, to Catch Young Birds, published as by the Authors of Original Poems, Rhymes for the Nursery, &c., &c., was another collaboration between Ann
and Jane Taylor
.
Wild birds...
Textual Production
Ann Martin Taylor
A book written in collaboration between AMT
and her daughter Jane
was published in early 1817: Correspondence Between a Mother and her Daughter at School. They had been working on it since before AMT's...
Textual Production
Ann Taylor Gilbert
Jane
and Ann Taylor
clubbed with friends, Josiah Conder
and others, to produce, anonymously, The Associate Minstrels.
Armitage, Doris Mary. The Taylors of Ongar. W. Heffer and Sons, 1939.
171
Textual Production
Ann Taylor Gilbert
Ann
and Jane Taylor
's Hymns for Infant Minds was published as by the Authors of Original Poems.
ATG
, her sister Jane
, and perhaps their brother Isaac
, anonymously provided the twelve poems making up a children's book called The Linnet's Life, illustrated by their father
.
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...
Textual Production
Ann Taylor Gilbert
Jane
and Ann Taylor
, with Adelaide O'Keeffe
and others, as Several Young Persons, published their phenomenally successful collection, Original Poems for Infant Minds.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
3d ser. 6 (1805): 333
Textual Production
Adelaide O'Keeffe
Following her collaboration with Ann
and Jane Taylor
, AOK
produced her own book of verse for children: Original Poems: Calculated to Improve the Mind of Youth, and Allure it to Virtue.
Ann
and Jane Taylor
revised for publication Rural Scenes; or, A Peep into the Country, for Good Children, originally written by William Darton
.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
3d ser. 6 (1805): 108
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.
Here she expounds her method of teaching her grandchildren [or step-grandchildren] through play, and features acute critical comment on female writers for children. In particular, she makes detailed, intelligent criticism of Maria Edgeworth
's children's...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Doreen Wallace
DW
does not write as a promoter. To her the Fens as a whole—including the Norfolk marsh-land—are dismally uninspiring from a scenic point of view.
Wallace, Doreen. East Anglia. Batsford, 1939.
71
She has no romantic illusions about pastoral life:...