Taylor 4

TOM TAYLOR (1817 - 1880)

Taylor (christened Tom) by turns dramatist, editor and critic, was born the son of a brewer in Bishopwearmouth. His father's business was in Horn's Lane, off High Street East and the family lived in High Street west, just south of the Wearmouth Bridge.

Taylor became Professor of English at London University 1845-47 and later editor of Punch from 1874 until his death. He was the Times art critic and appeared as a witness for Ruskin in the famous libel action brought against him by Whistler in 1878. He wrote some 80 plays in his lifetime as well as much journalism. He also produced a pseudo-mediaeval romance Metrical Romance of Sir Ysumbras on which Millais based his famous painting, now at the Lady Lever Gallery in Port Sunlight. Between 1853 and 1870, he was house dramatist at the Olympic, and, later the Haymarket theatres in London. His melodrama The Ticket-of-Leave Man (1863), introducing the detective 'Nailer' Hawkshaw, a Durham man (as he gratuitously states), was a great success. Hawkshaw's name became a kind of shorthand for any great detective, and even as late as 1972, in his authoritative survey of detective fiction Bloody Murder, Julian Symons states in an introductory poem:

There is a specific by which a respectable
Writer may puff away such nastiness
And regiment like Hawkshaw the unruly
Shapes of life to an ideal order.

The Ticket-of-Leave Man was later filmed in Hollywood, with Tod Slaughter. Taylor was a friend of Lewis Carroll and introduced him to his famous illustrator, Tenniel. In his turn, Carroll pointed out some arithmetical errors in Taylor's play. Another of Taylor's dramas Our American Cousin (1858) which created the character of the brainless and bewhiskered Lord Dundreary, has become notorious as the play Abraham Lincoln was watching when he was assassinated.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
TOM TAYLOR (1817 - 1880) Taylor (christened Tom) by turns dramatist, editor and critic, was born the son of a brewer in Bishopwearmouth. His father's business was in Horn's Lane, off High Street East and the family lived in High Street west, just south of the Wearmouth Bridge. Taylor became Professor of English at London University 1845-47 and later editor of Punch from 1874 until his death. He was the Times art critic and appeared as a witness for Ruskin in the famous libel action brought against him by Whistler in 1878. He wrote some 80 plays in his lifetime as well as much journalism. He also produced a pseudo-mediaeval romance Metrical Romance of Sir Ysumbras on which Millais based his famous painting, now at the Lady Lever Gallery in Port Sunlight. Between 1853 and 1870, he was house dramatist at the Olympic, and, later the Haymarket theatres in London. His melodrama The Ticket-of-Leave Man (1863), introducing the detective 'Nailer' Hawkshaw, a Durham man (as he gratuitously states), was a great success. Hawkshaw's name became a kind of shorthand for any great detective, and even as late as 1972, in his authoritative survey of detective fiction Bloody Murder, Julian Symons states in an introductory poem: There is a specific by which a respectable Writer may puff away such nastiness And regiment like Hawkshaw the unruly Shapes of life to an ideal order. The Ticket-of-Leave Man was later filmed in Hollywood, with Tod Slaughter. Taylor was a friend of Lewis Carroll and introduced him to his famous illustrator, Tenniel. In his turn, Carroll pointed out some arithmetical errors in Taylor's play. Another of Taylor's dramas Our American Cousin (1858) which created the character of the brainless and bewhiskered Lord Dundreary, has become notorious as the play Abraham Lincoln was watching when he was assassinated.
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