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
.
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
were not entirely happy with the publishers' decision to include thirty-four poems by AOK
(given with her Christian name) in their collection Original Poems for Infant Minds, published in 1804...
Education
Christina Rossetti
Christina and her siblings were educated by their mother
, in reading, writing, the Bible and rudimentary French. The boys were sent to school when they were seven, while the girls continued at home. Their...
Family and Intimate relationships
Elizabeth Strutt
Jacob George Strutt and his siblings (a lively family of vegetarians) grew up in Colchester and were close friends of the Taylors, including the writers Jane Taylor
and the future Ann Taylor Gilbert
. He...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ann Martin Taylor
Although she scribbled verse (and satirical verse at that) from her teens, ATG had early in life a decisive feeling of antagonism towards authorship as such, probably attributable to her pungent dislike
Taylor, Isaac, editor. The Family Pen. Jackson, Walford and Hodder.
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 Martin Taylor
AMT
(mother of Ann
and Jane Taylor
) published with her name Maternal Solicitude for a Daughter's Best Interests.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
4th ser. 5 (1814): 108
Author summary
Ann Martin Taylor
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...
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...
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
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.
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.
71
She has no romantic illusions about pastoral life:...
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Elizabeth Pipe Wolferstan
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...