Emily Taylor

• Name — Emily Howson Taylor • Born — 7 April 1795 • Birthplace — Banham, Norfolk, England • Died — 11 March 1872 • Place of death — St Pancras, London, England • Occupation — Schoolmistress, writer • Language — English • Relatives — Edgar Taylor (brother)

Emily Howson Taylor was born in 1795, in Banham, Norfolk. She was the daughter of Samuel Taylor, of New Buckenham, Norfolk, a niece of John Taylor, of Norwich, a hymn writer, and a great-granddaughter of Dr John Taylor, a Hebraist. Her brother Edgar Taylor was also a writer and translator. Her mother died shortly after she was born, so that she was brought up by her father, five brothers, one sister and two aunts. At the age of seven, she caught scarlet fever. As a result, she became partly deaf after and could not attend formal schooling.

When she moved with her father to nearby New Buckenham, she started a school for some 30 children, which laid emphasis on singing, partly because Taylor had become friendly with Sarah Ann Glover, a musical theorist who had developed the Norwich sol-fa system. In 1825, she published The Vision of Las Casas, and Other Poems. The title poem, about a vision of the dying Bartolomé de las Casas, has an anti-slavery theme. Las Casas' vision ends with his being granted a prophetic glimpse of the abolitionist movement in Taylor's own time, with specific mentions of Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce. Taylor moved up to London in 1842, to live with a widowed sister and continued to teach. Taylor wrote numerous historical tales, works of instruction for children, and popular biographies, including The Ball I Live On, or, Sketches of the Earth and Chronicles of an Old English Oak, or Sketches of English Life and History. Works of hers appeared in the Monthly Repository among other publications. Originally a Unitarian, she joined the Church of England under the influence of English theologian Frederick Denison Maurice. Taylor's other publications include Letters to a Child on Maritime Discovery(1820), Poetical Illustrations of Passages of Scripture (1826), Tales of the Saxons (1832), Tales of the English (1833), Memoir of Sir T[homas] More (1834) and The Boy and the Birds (1835). In addition she edited Sabbath. Recreations (1826) and Flowers and Fruit in old English Gardens (1836), and contributed to the Magnet Stories (1860) and the Rainbow Stories (1870).

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