Tom Taylor

Taylor owed his fame and most of his income not to his academic, legal or government work, but to his writing. Soon after moving to London, he obtained remunerative work as a leader writer for the Morning Chronicle and the Daily News. He was also art critic for The Times and The Graphic for many years. He edited the Autobiography of B. R. Haydon (1853), the Autobiography and Correspondence of C. R. Leslie, R.A. (1860) and Pen Sketches from a Vanished Hand, selected from papers of Mortimer Collins, and wrote Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1865). With his first contribution to Punch, on 19 October 1844, Taylor began a thirty-six year association with the weekly humour and satire magazine, which ended only with his death. During the 1840s he wrote on average three columns a month; in the 1850s and 1860s this output doubled. His biographer Craig Howes writes that Taylor's articles were generally humorous commentary or comic verses on politics, civic news, and the manners of the day. In 1874 he succeeded Charles William Shirley Brooks as editor. Taylor also established himself as a playwright and eventually produced about 100 plays. Between 1844 and 1846, the Lyceum Theatre staged at least seven of his plays, including extravanzas written with Albert Smith or Charles Kenney, and his first major success, the 1846 farce To Parents and Guardians. The Morning Post said of that piece, "The writing is admirable throughout – neat, natural and epigrammatic". It was as a dramatist that Taylor made the most impression – his biographer in the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) wrote that in writing plays Taylor found his true vocation. In thirty-five years he wrote more than seventy plays for the principal London theatres. • Illustration — Poster for an 1868 revival of The Ticket-of-Leave Man A substantial portion of Taylor's prolific output consisted of adaptations from the French or collaborations with other playwrights, notably Charles Reade. Some of his plots were adapted from the novels of Charles Dickens or others. Many of Taylor's plays were extremely popular, such as Masks and Faces, an extravaganza written in collaboration with Reade, produced at the Haymarket Theatre in November 1852. It was followed by the almost equally successful To Oblige Benson (Olympic Theatre, 1854), an adaptation from a French vaudeville. Others mentioned by the DNB are Plot and Passion (1853), Still Waters Run Deep (1855) and The Ticket-of-Leave Man (based on Le Retour de Melun by Édouard Brisebarre and Eugène Nus), a melodrama produced at the Olympic in 1863. Taylor also wrote a series of historical dramas (many in blank verse), including The Fool’s Revenge (1869), an adaption of Victor Hugo's Le roi s'amuse (also adapted by Verdi as Rigoletto), Twixt Axe and Crown (1870), Jeanne d'arc (1871), Lady Clancarty (1874) and Anne Boleyn (1875). The last of these, produced at the Haymarket in 1875, was Taylor's penultimate piece and only complete failure. In 1871 Taylor supplied the words to Arthur Sullivan's dramatic cantata, On Shore and Sea. Like his colleague W. S. Gilbert, Taylor believed that plays should be readable as well as actable; he followed Gilbert in having copies of his plays printed for public sale. Both authors did so at some risk, because it made matters easy for American pirates of their works in the days before international copyright protection. Taylor wrote, "I have no wish to screen myself from literary criticism behind the plea that my plays were meant to be acted. It seems to me that every drama submitted to the judgment of audiences should be prepared to encounter that of readers". • Illustration — Taylor by Lewis Carroll, 1863 Many of Taylor's plays were extremely popular, and several survived into the 20th century, although most are largely forgotten today. His Our American Cousin (1858) is now remembered chiefly as the play Abraham Lincoln was attending when he was assassinated, but it was revived many times during the 19th century with great success. It became celebrated as a vehicle for the popular comic actor Edward Sothern, and after his death, his sons, Lytton and E. H. Sothern, took over the part in revivals.

• Valentine and Orson, 1844 • Whittington and his Cat, 1844 • Cinderella, 1844 • A Trip to Kissingen, 1844 • To Parents and Guardians, 1845 • Diogenes and his Lantern, 1849 • The Vicar of Wakefield, 1850 • The Philosopher's Stone, 1850 • Prince Dorus, 1850 • Our Clerks, 1852 • Wittikind and his Brothers, 1852 • Plot and Passion, 1853 • A Nice Firm, 1853 • The King's Rival, 1854 • Masks and Faces, 1854 • To Oblige Benson, 1854 • Two Loves and a Life, 1854 • Still Waters Run Deep, 1855 • Helping Hands, 1855 • Retribution, 1856 • Victims, 1857 • A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing, 1857 • An Unequal Match, 1857 • Our American Cousin, 1858 • Going to the Bad, 1858 • New Men and Old Acres, 1859 • A Tale of Two Cities, 1859 • Barefaced Impostors, 1859 • The Contested Election, 1859 • Nine Points of the Law, 1859 • The Overland Route, 1860 • Up at the Hills, 1860 • The Babes in the Wood, 1860 • The Ticket-of-leave Man, 1863 • Sense and Sensation, 1864 • Henry Dunbar, 1865 • The Sister's Penance, 1866 • The Fool's Revenge, 1869 • Mary Warner, 1869 • The Babes in the Wood, 1870 • Twixt Axe and Crown, 1870 • The Hidden Hand, 1870 • Joan of Arc, 1871 • Arkwright’s Wife, 1873 • Lady Clancarty, 1874 • Anne Boleyn, 1875 • Settling Day, 1877 • Source: Dictionary of National Biography.