Jane Taylor

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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, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
In the recent re-evaluation of women's writing, JT has her champions, notably critic Stuart Curran .
Photograph of the painting of Jane Taylor and her older sister (later Ann Taylor Gilbert) by their father, Isaac, May 1792. The girls wear matching white dresses with puffed sleeves, lace edged necklines, and pink ribbons round the waist, tied in a bow at the back. Both have wavy blonde hair, and Jane clasps a bunch of pink flowers. Behind are trees, grass, and in the distance the rest of the family clustered around a gazebo. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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...
Education Frances Power Cobbe
FPC received lessons from her nurse Martha Jones and from her mother . Her reading included Sarah Trimmer 's History of the Robins, Anna Barbauld 's Lessons for Children, and poetry by Jane Taylor
Education Mary Gawthorpe
One of the poems MG had to learn for recitation was Meddlesome Matty by Ann Taylor (later Gilbert) .
Gawthorpe, Mary. Up Hill to Holloway. Traversity Press, 1962.
47
(MG thought it was by the other sister, and later regretted that she never...
Family and Intimate relationships Ann Taylor Gilbert
A month before her sister Jane died of cancer, ATG expected her to survive: she had previously called Jane's illness the Lord's doing,
Gilbert, Ann Taylor. Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs. Gilbert. Gilbert, JosiahEditor , H. S. King, 1874.
2: 42
implying that it must therefore be good.
Gilbert, Ann Taylor. Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs. Gilbert. Gilbert, JosiahEditor , H. S. King, 1874.
2: 45
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...
Family and Intimate relationships Edward FitzGerald
After remaining single until he was approaching fifty, EFG married Lucy Barton , a woman of his own age who had been born and lived most of her life in Suffolk. Lucy had published...
Family and Intimate relationships Ann Taylor Gilbert
The young Ann and Jane Taylor had a bad few months: their father was desperately ill with rheumatic fever, and at the height of his illness their mother suffered a nervous collapse.
Gilbert, Ann Taylor. Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs. Gilbert. Gilbert, JosiahEditor , H. S. King, 1874.
1: 65, 67
Family and Intimate relationships Ann Taylor Gilbert
Ann's next sister, Jane , shared in their earliest writings as well as their engraving work, and became a remarkable religious poet.
Friends, Associates Ann Taylor Gilbert
The Taylor family (including Ann and Jane ) met the family of John Constable the landscape painter.
Gilbert, Ann Taylor. Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs. Gilbert. Gilbert, JosiahEditor , H. S. King, 1874.
1: 126
Friends, Associates Jean Ingelow
JI had a small but distinguished circle of intimate friends. By 1863 she was a friend of Alfred Tennyson and was also close to Dora Greenwell . She admired and respected Robert Browning (though she...
Intertextuality and Influence Ann Taylor Gilbert
The young Ann and Jane Taylor , with several of their friends, formed the Umbelliferous Society (a name meaning many flowers on a stem), which met monthly to read out their own and others' writing.
Gilbert, Ann Taylor. Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs. Gilbert. Gilbert, JosiahEditor , H. S. King, 1874.
1: 117
Intertextuality and Influence Edna Lyall
Escreet observes that The Autobiography of a Slander is EL 's only book to have an unhappy ending.
Escreet, J. M. The Life of Edna Lyall. Longmans, Green and Co., 1904.
65
In fact, though, while the central characters are left dead and miserable respectively, Lyall hints at...
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, 1867.
18
of Mary Wollstonecraft
Literary responses Anne Grant
In 1867 Isaac Taylor the younger (brother of Ann Taylor Gilbert and Jane Taylor ) praised AG 's work in The Family Pen.
Taylor, Isaac, editor. The Family Pen. Jackson, Walford and Hodder, 1867.
209
Occupation Hannah Kilham
She was the only European at this settlement. In a letter she wrote of the girls entrusted to her by the governor: They are fine children, and will I trust be apt to learn....

Timeline

2 July 1798
The conservative Lady's Monthly Museum: or polite repository of amusement and instruction published its first number. Sometimes called The Ladies' Monthly Museum . . . it ran until the 1830s.
By Christmas 1869
Francis Galton , mathematician, scientist, and eugenicist, published Hereditary Genius: An Enquiry into its Laws and Consequences,
By 18 August 1888
Lucy Walford published Four Biographies from Blackwood's.