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, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tub ...

and

John Clare John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet. The son of a farm labourer, he became known for his celebrations of the English countryside and his sorrows at its disruption. His work underwent major re-evaluation in the late 20t ...

Life

He was born in

East Retford East is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sunrise, Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact ...

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated ''Notts.'') is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. The county is bordered by South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. Th ...

, the son of James Taylor and Sarah Drury; his father was a printer and bookseller. He attended school first at Lincoln Grammar School 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 and Hessey

Taylor formed a partnership with James Augustus Hessey (1785–1870), as Taylor & Hessey, at 93

Fleet Street Fleet Street is a street in Central London, England. It runs west to east from Temple Bar, London, Temple Bar at the boundary of the City of London, Cities of London and City of Westminster, Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the Lo ...

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

Taylor and Walton

In later years he became Bookseller and Publisher to the then new

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

and, now in formal partnership with James Walton, moved to Upper Gower Street. 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 an area of London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, around 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 by Kensingt ...

, 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 Sotheby's ( ) is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine art, fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

, but the poets of the

Regency era The Regency era of British history is commonly understood as the years between and 1837, although the official regency for which it is named only spanned the years 1811 to 1820. King George III first suffered debilitating illness in the lat ...

were out of fashion, and the total only fetched about £250. In contrast, when sold in 1897, the manuscripts of '' Endymion'' and '' Lamia'' fetched £695 and £305 respectively.

Publications

Taylor wrote and published his own work, ''Junius Identified'', naming the writer of ''

Letters of Junius ''Letters of Junius'' (or Junius: ''Stat nominis umbra'') is a collection of private and open letters critical of the government of King George III from an anonymous polemicist ( Junius) claimed by some to be Philip Francis (although Junius' real ...

'', 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 In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their summation, sum to the larger of the two quantities. Expressed algebraically, for quantities and with , is in a golden ratio to if \fr ...

may have been deliberately incorporated into the design of the

Great Pyramid of Khufu The Great Pyramid of Giza is the largest Egyptian pyramid. It served as the tomb of pharaoh Khufu, who ruled during the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Built , over a period of about 26 years, the pyramid is the oldest of the Seven Wond ...

Giza Giza (; sometimes spelled ''Gizah, Gizeh, Geeza, Jiza''; , , ' ) is the third-largest city in Egypt by area after Cairo and Alexandria; and fourth-largest city in Africa by population after Kinshasa, Lagos, and Cairo. It is the capital of ...

. His theories in

pyramidology Pyramidology (or pyramidism) refers to various religion, religious or pseudoscience, pseudoscientific speculations regarding pyramids, most often the Giza pyramid complex and the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.Martin Gardner, ''Fads and Fallaci ...

were then expanded by

Charles Piazzi Smyth Charles Piazzi Smyth (3 January 1819 – 21 February 1900) was a British astronomer who was Astronomer Royal for Scotland from 1846 to 1888; he is known for many innovations in astronomy and, along with his wife Jessica Duncan Piazzi Smyth, hi ...

. His 1864 book ''The Battle of the Standards'' was a campaign against the adoption of the

metric system The metric system is a system of measurement that standardization, standardizes a set of base units and a nomenclature for describing relatively large and small quantities via decimal-based multiplicative unit prefixes. Though the rules gover ...

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 for Bakewell pudding. It lies on the River Wye, Derbyshire, River Wye, 15 miles (23 km) south-west of Sheffield. It is the largest se ...

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire to the north, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the south a ...

, 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 Exchange rate, rate of ...

References

External links

* Stray, Chris (1996)
''John Taylor and Locke’s Classical System''
Retrieved October 19, 2005. * *
Publications by Taylor and Hessey
at the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

Taylor, John (1781-1864) Publisher
at the

National Archives National archives are the archives of a country. The concept evolved in various nations at the dawn of modernity based on the impact of nationalism upon bureaucratic processes of paperwork retention. Conceptual development From the Middle Ages i ...

, London
John Taylor, publishers
at the

, London
John Taylor and James Augustus Hessey
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, London {{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, John 1781 births 1864 deaths People from Retford Publishers (people) from London English booksellers People educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Retford People educated at Lincoln Grammar School Pyramidologists Victorian writers 19th-century English writers English male writers 19th-century English businesspeople