Mary Taylor

-
Standard Name: Taylor, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Taylor
Pseudonym: M. T.
Pseudonym: T.
Nickname: Polly
Nickname: Poll
Nickname: Pag
A committed proponent of female economic independence, MT was the author of some twenty articles on this and other feminist topics for Emily Faithfull 's Victoria Magazine during the 1860s and 1870s. Many of these polemic essays were reprinted in volume form in The First Duty of Women in 1870. The issue of women's work was also central to Taylor's only novel—a text she took more than forty years to write: Miss Miles (1890). In addition, MT collaborated with four other women to write a Swiss travel memoir in 1875.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Charlotte Brontë
She rose to the top of her class by the end of her first six months, and stayed there until her departure, as well as winning prizes in French. There she also met Mary Taylor
Friends, Associates Charlotte Brontë
Taylor and Nussey became lifelong friends and correspondents of CB . She spent short holidays at their homes.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press, 1994.
172, 174, 176
Occupation Charlotte Brontë
She found her duties degrading and felt herself publicly humiliated by her employer. She concluded to Emily, a private governess has no existence, is not considered as a living and rational being.
Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. St Martin’s Press, 1994.
310
Her friend...
politics John Milton
This is an argument which defends Milton's behaviour, and later Milton critics have offered different defences of him in the light of different ideas about what constitutes good behaviour in matters of gender. Meanwhile a...
Textual Production Emily Brontë
A letter from her publisher Newby in February 1848 suggests that EB had consulted him about the publication of another novel, then in progress. At the end of the year, he announced that another work...

Timeline

1783: Hugh Blair published Lectures on Rhetoric...

Writing climate item

1783

Hugh Blair published Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres.
Hawkes, Terence. “Dr Blair, the Leavis of the North”. London Review of Books, 18 Feb. 1999, pp. 23-4.
24

Texts

Murray, Janet Horowitz, and Mary Taylor. “Introduction”. Miss Miles; or, A Tale of Yorkshire Life 60 Years Ago, Oxford University Press, 1990, p. vii - xxiv.
Taylor, Mary. Mary Taylor, Friend of Charlotte Brontë: Letters from New Zealand and Elsewhere. Editor Stevens, Joan, Auckland University Press; Oxford University Press, 1972.
Taylor, Mary. Miss Miles; or, A Tale of Yorkshire Life 60 Years Ago. Remington, 1890.
Taylor, Mary, and Janet Horowitz Murray. Miss Miles; or, A Tale of Yorkshire life 60 Years Ago. Oxford University Press, 1990.
Taylor, Mary et al. Swiss Notes by Five Ladies. Inchbold and Beck, 1875.
Taylor, Mary. The First Duty of Women. Emily Faithfull, 1870.