John Taylor (31 July 1781 – 5 July 1864) was an English publisher, essayist, and writer. He is noted as the publisher of the poets

John Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculo ...

and John Clare.

Life

He was born in East Retford, Nottinghamshire, the son of James Taylor and Sarah Drury; his father was a printer and bookseller. He attended school first at

Lincoln Grammar School Lincoln Grammar School or Lincoln Free School was formed as the result of the amalgamation of the Lincoln City Free School and the Lincoln Chapter Grammar School. The amalgamation occurred in January 1584, but the two schools may have been effec ...

and then he went to the local grammar school in Retford. He was originally apprenticed to his father, but eventually he moved to London and worked for James Lackington in 1803. Taylor left after a short while because of low pay. Taylor formed a partnership with James Augustus Hessey (1785–1870), as Taylor & Hessey, at 93

Fleet Street Fleet Street is a major street mostly in the City of London. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary with the City of Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was na ...

, London. In 1819, through his cousin Edward Drury, a bookseller in Stamford, he was introduced to John Clare of

Helpston Helpston (also, formerly, "Helpstone") is an England, English village formerly in the Soke of Peterborough, geographically in Northamptonshire, subsequently (1965–1974) in Huntingdon and Peterborough, then in Cambridgeshire, and administered b ...

in Northamptonshire. He polished Clare's grammar and spelling for publication. He was also Keats's publisher, and published works by Lamb, Coleridge and Hazlitt. In 1821 John Taylor became involved in publishing the '' London Magazine''. In later years he became Bookseller and Publisher to the then new University of London and, now in formal partnership with James Walton, moved to

Upper Gower Street Gower Street is a two-way street in Bloomsbury, central London, running from Euston Road at the north to Montague Place in the south. The street is continued from North Gower Street north of Euston Road. To the south, it becomes Bloomsbury St ...

. As such he developed a line in what was then the new and developing field of standard academic text books. After a long bachelor's life fraught with illness and depression, he died at 7 Leonard Place,

Kensington Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in the West End of London, West of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up b ...

, on 5 July 1864 and was buried in the churchyard at Gamston, near Retford, where his tombstone was paid for by the University of London.

Legacy

After Taylor's death, many of his manuscripts were put up for sale at Sotheby's, but the poets of the Regency era were out of fashion, and the total only fetched about £250. In contrast, when sold in 1897, the manuscripts of ''

Endymion Endymion primarily refers to: * Endymion (mythology), an Ancient Greek shepherd * ''Endymion'' (poem), by John Keats Endymion may also refer to: Fictional characters * Prince Endymion, a character in the ''Sailor Moon'' anime franchise * Raul ...

'' and '' Lamia'' fetched £695 and £305 respectively.

Publications

Taylor wrote and published his own work, ''Junius Identified'', naming the writer of '' Letters of Junius'', probably correctly, as Sir Philip Francis. It ran to two editions, the second in 1818. * Taylor, John. ''The Great Pyramid: Why Was It Built, & Who Built It?'' Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1859 (London). * Taylor, John. ''The Battle of the Standards. The Ancient, of Four Thousand Years, Against the Modern, of the Last Fifty Years--the Less Perfect of the Two.'' Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1864 (London). In ''The Great Pyramid'' (1859), Taylor argued that the numbers pi and the golden ratio may have been deliberately incorporated into the design of the

Great Pyramid of Khufu The Great Pyramid of Giza is the biggest Egyptian pyramids, Egyptian pyramid and the tomb of Fourth Dynasty of Egypt, Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khufu. Built in the early 26th century BC during a period of around 27 years, the pyramid is the oldes ...

Giza Giza (; sometimes spelled ''Gizah'' arz, الجيزة ' ) is the second-largest city in Egypt after Cairo and fourth-largest city in Africa after Kinshasa, Lagos and Cairo. It is the capital of Giza Governorate with a total population of 9.2 ...

. His theories in pyramidology were then expanded by Charles Piazzi Smyth. His 1864 book ''The Battle of the Standards'' was a campaign against the adoption of the metric system in Britain, and relied on results from his earlier book to show a divine origin for the British units of measure. According to Bernard Lightman, these two publications are strongly linked. He says: "Taylor and his disciples urged that the dimensions of the Pyramid showed the divine origin of the British units of length."Bernard Lightman, ''Victorian Science in Context,'' p.450, University of Chicago Press, 199

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Family

His brother, James Taylor (1788–1863), banker of

Bakewell Bakewell is a market town and civil parish in the Derbyshire Dales district of Derbyshire, England, known also for its local Bakewell pudding. It lies on the River Wye, about 13 miles (21 km) south-west of Sheffield. In the 2011 census, ...

in Derbyshire, published a number of articles on

bimetallism Bimetallism, also known as the bimetallic standard, is a monetary standard in which the value of the monetary unit is defined as equivalent to certain quantities of two metals, typically gold and silver, creating a fixed rate of exchange betwee ...

Life

Legacy

Publications

Family

See also

References

Further reading

External links