Taylor, Sir Henry

(1800-1886)

   Born at Bishop-Middleham, Count Durham, the son of a farmer, he was educated mainly at home until 1814. He was a midshipman for a year, but his health was not up to it, so he returned home to immerse himself in his father's well-stocked library. In 1817, two of his brothers died from typhus in London, but Henry survived and from 1824 until 1872 he worked for the colonial office, during which time he exercised considerable influence on the colonial policy of the British Empire. In 1872 he was made a Knight of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, and retired to Bournemouth, Dorset, where he died. Taylor wrote a romantic comedy and four verse tragedies. Philip Van Artevelde (1834) was set in Flanders in the 14th century. The Statesman (1836) was a satire on the civil service. He was a friend and literary executor of Robert Southey (see entry). Some of his poems: "Alabama!" "A Welcome," "Heroism in the Shade," "St. Clement's Eve," "Sonnet in the Mail Coach," "The Eve of the Conquest," "The Hero, the Poet, and the Girl," "Women Singing."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). The National Portrait Gallery. (www.npg.org.uk). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Book of Regency Verse 1798-1837. H.S. Milford, ed. Oxford University Press, 1928. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. Oxford University Press, 1971. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse. Alan Michael Parker and Mark Willhardt, eds. Routledge, 1996. The Treasury of English Poetry. Mark Caldwell and Walter Kendrick, eds. Doubleday, 1984.