Introduction

Biography

Only child of weal­thy Nor­wich mer­chant Will­iam Taylor and Sar­ah Wright, Will­iam the young­er was edu­cat­ed at the board­ing school of Roche­mont Bar­bauld (hus­band of An­na Bar­bauld) in Pal­grave, Suf­folk. Af­ter tra­vel­ing through the Ne­ther­lands, France, It­aly and Ger­ma­ny, he set­tled in Nor­wich in 1782.

In 1791, he re­tired from bu­si­ness and de­vot­ed him­self to li­ter­ature.

He was a fre­quent con­trib­ut­or to the Month­ly, the Cri­tic­al, and oth­er Re­views, and was one of the first to in­tro­duce the stu­dy of Ger­man li­ter­ature in­to Eng­land. His trans­la­tion of Na­than der Weise, by Got­thold Eph­ra­im Less­ing, ap­peared in 1791, and of Iph­igen­ia in Tau­ris, by Goethe (whom he had met in Weimar) in 1793. In 1813, he pub­lished Eng­lish Sy­nonyms Dis­crim­in­at­ed, and in 1828-30 his 3-volume His­tor­ic­al Surv­ey of Ger­man Po­et­ry.

John War­den Rob­berds pub­lished a two-vol­ume Mem­oir of the Life and Writ­ings of Will­iam Taylor in Lon­don in 1843.

Taylor was a mem­ber of the con­gre­ga­tion of the Oc­ta­gon Cha­pel, Norw­ich, and con­trib­uted five hymns to Will­iam En­field’s 1795 Nor­wich Se­lect­ion of Hymns for Soc­ial Wor­ship.