Ann Taylor was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 poet and literary critic. In her youth she was a writer of verse for children, for which she achieved long-lasting popularity. In the years immediately preceding her marriage, she became an astringent literary critic of growing reputation. She is, however, best remembered as the elder sister and collaborator of Jane Taylor

Jane Taylor (poet)

Jane Taylor , was an English poet and novelist. She wrote the words for the song Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star in 1806 at age 23, while living in Shilling Street, Lavenham, Suffolk....

.

The literary family

The Taylor sisters were part of an extensive literary family, daughters of Isaac Taylor of Ongar. Ann was born in Islington

Islington

Islington is a neighbourhood in Greater London, England and forms the central district of the London Borough of Islington. It is a district of Inner London, spanning from Islington High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the area around the busy Upper Street...

 and lived with her family at first in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and later in Lavenham

Lavenham

Lavenham is a village and civil parish in Suffolk, England. It is noted for its 15th century church, half-timbered medieval cottages and circular walk. In the medieval period it was among the 20 wealthiest settlements in England...

 in Suffolk

Suffolk

Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...

, in Colchester

Colchester

Colchester is an historic town and the largest settlement within the borough of Colchester in Essex, England.At the time of the census in 2001, it had a population of 104,390. However, the population is rapidly increasing, and has been named as one of Britain's fastest growing towns. As the...

 and, briefly, in Ongar

Chipping Ongar

Chipping Ongar is a small market town, and a civil parish called Ongar, in the Epping Forest district of the county of Essex, England. It is located East of Epping, South-East of Harlow and North-West of Brentwood.-Geography:...

. The sisters' brother, Isaac Taylor, was, like his father, an engraver of considerable distinction and later became an educational pioneer and Independent minister and wrote a number of very successful instructional books for the young. Their mother, Mrs. (Ann Martin) Taylor (1757–1830) wrote seven works of moral and religious advice - in many respects, strikingly liberal for their time - two of them fictionalized.

Ann and Jane's brothers, Isaac

Isaac Taylor

Isaac Taylor was an English philosophical and historical writer, artist, and inventor.-Life:He was the eldest surviving son of Isaac Taylor of Ongar. He was born at Lavenham, Suffolk, on 17 August 1787, and moved with his family to Colchester and, at the end of 1810, to Ongar. In the family...

 and Jefferys, also wrote, the former being one of the most learned men of his day, a theologian of international reputation, but also the inventor of a patent beer tap

Beer tap

A beer tap is a valve, specifically a tap, for controlling the release of beer. While in other contexts, depending on location, a "tap" may be a "faucet", "valve" or "spigot", the use of "tap" for beer is almost universal. This may be because the word was originally coined for the wooden valve in...

 in use throughout Britain

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 for many years. Rev. Isaac Taylor's elder brother Charles edited The Literary Panorama, for which he also wrote extensively on many topics from art to politics, and produced, anonymously, a massive annotated translation of Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible, which remained a model for biblical scholarship for several decades. His younger brother Josiah was an influential and successful publisher, chiefly of works on architecture and design.

Authorship

The sisters and their authorship of various works have often been confused, usually to Jane's advantage. This is in part because their early works for children were published together and without attribution, but also because Jane, by dying young at the height of her powers, unwittingly attracted early posthumous eulogies, including what is almost a hagiography

Hagiography

Hagiography is the study of saints.From the Greek and , it refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though less common...

 by her brother Isaac, and much of Ann's work came to be ascribed to Jane, a borrowing which, Ann ruefully remarked, she could ill afford and which Jane certainly did not require. It is true that Jane achieved much more than Ann as a writer of poetry for an adult readership - though Ann's poem "The Maniac's Song", published in the Associate Minstrels (1810), was probably the finest short poem by either sister, and it has even been postulated that it was an inspiration for Keats's La Belle Dame sans Merci (Lynette Felber: Ann Taylor's "The Maniac's Song": an unacknowledged source for Keats's "La Belle Dame sans Merci".

However, Ann also deserves to be remembered as a writer of prose

Prose

Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...

, as evidenced particularly by her autobiography

Autobiography

An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

 and by the many letters of hers that survive; her style is strong and vivid and, when she is not too preoccupied with moral and religious themes - like her sister Jane, she tended to undue pessimism about her own spiritual worth - it is often shot through with a pleasing, and sometimes acerbic, wit. The Autobiography also provides much detailed and fascinating information about the life of a moderately prosperous dissenting family in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Appreciations

Ann Taylor's son, Josiah Gilbert, wrote: "two little poems–"My Mother," and "Twinkle, twinkle, little Star," are perhaps, more frequently quoted than any; the first, a lyric of life, was by Ann, the second, of nature, by Jane; and they illustrate this difference between the sisters." Both poems attracted the compliment of frequent parody throughout the 19th century. The logician Augustus De Morgan

Augustus De Morgan

Augustus De Morgan was a British mathematician and logician. He formulated De Morgan's laws and introduced the term mathematical induction, making its idea rigorous. The crater De Morgan on the Moon is named after him....

 asserted (somewhat extravagantly!) that Gilbert's mother wrote "one of the most beautiful lyrics in the English language, or any other language" and not knowing that Ann Gilbert was still alive, called upon Tennyson to supply a less heterodox version of the final stanza, which seemed to de Morgan unworthy of the rest.

Original Poems for Infant Minds by several young persons (by Ann and Jane and others) was first issued in two volumes in 1804 and 1805. Rhymes for the Nursery followed in 1806, and Hymns for Infant Minds in 1808. In Original Poems for Infant Minds the authors were identified for each poem. In Rhymes for the Nursery (1806) poems were not identified by author. Attributions for the sisters' poems can be found in an exceptional Taylor resource: The Taylors of Ongar: An Analytical Bio-Bibliography by Christina Duff Stewart. Stewart cites a copy of Rhymes for the Nursery belonging to a nephew, Canon Isaac Taylor, annotated to indicate the respective authorship of Ann and Jane. Stewart also confirms attributions of Original Poems based on publisher's records.

Marriage and widowhood

On December 24, 1813, Ann married Joseph Gilbert

Joseph Gilbert (minister)

-Life:Born in the parish of Wrangle, Lincolnshire, on 20 March 1779, he was son of a farmer who had come under the influence of John Wesley. After receiving some education at a nearby free school, he was apprenticed to a general shopkeeper at Burgh. On the expiration of his term he became assistant...

, an Independent (later Congregational) minister and theologian, and left Ongar to make a new home far from her family, at Masborough near Rotherham

Rotherham

Rotherham is a town in South Yorkshire, England. It lies on the River Don, at its confluence with the River Rother, between Sheffield and Doncaster. Rotherham, at from Sheffield City Centre, is surrounded by several smaller settlements, which together form the wider Metropolitan Borough of...

. A widower of thirty-three, Gilbert had proposed to Ann before he had even met her, forming a sound estimation of her character and intelligence from her writings, particularly as a trenchant critic in The Eclectic Review

The Eclectic Review

The Eclectic Review was a British periodical published monthly during the first half of the 19th century aimed at highly literate readers of all classes. Published between 1805 and 1868, it reviewed books in many fields, including literature, history, theology, politics, science, art, and philosophy...

. Gilbert was, at the time of their marriage, the classical tutor at Rotherham Independent College - the nearest thing to a university open to dissenters at this time - and simultaneously pastor of the Nether Chapel in Sheffield

Sheffield

Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...

. In 1817, he moved to the pastorate of the Fish Street Chapel in Hull

Kingston upon Hull

Kingston upon Hull , usually referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles inland from the North Sea. Hull has a resident population of...

 and then, in 1825, to Nottingham

Nottingham

Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England. It is located in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and represents one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group...

, serving in chapels in the city for the rest of his life.

Kept busy with the duties of wife and later mother, Ann Gilbert still managed to write poems, hymns, essays, and letters. Her interest in public matters, such as atheism, prison reform, and the anti-slavery movement, often spurred her to take up her pen, and the results of those scattered moments found a way into print. Oddly for one of such independence of mind and strongly held and usually liberal opinions, she was firmly opposed to female suffrage.

After Gilbert died on December 12, 1852, Ann found time to write a short memoir of her husband. Nor did she spend the rest of her long life in gentle retirement. As well as actively supporting the members of her large family, through visits and a constant stream of letters - family was always of central concern to the Taylors - she travelled widely in many parts of Britain, taking in her stride as an old lady traveling conditions that might have daunted one much younger. She died on December 20, 1866 and was buried next to her husband in Nottingham General Cemetery, although the inscription recording this on the vast Gothic sarcophagus

Sarcophagus

A sarcophagus is a funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved or cut from stone. The word "sarcophagus" comes from the Greek σαρξ sarx meaning "flesh", and φαγειν phagein meaning "to eat", hence sarkophagus means "flesh-eating"; from the phrase lithos sarkophagos...

has disappeared.

Sources

• Taylor, Ann. The Autobiography and Other Memorials of Mrs Gilbert, Formerly Ann Taylor. Ed. Josiah Gilbert. London: Henry S. King & Co., 1874.
• Memoirs, Correspondence and Poetical Remains of Jane Taylor Volume I of The Writings of Jane Taylor, In Five Volumes: Boston: Perkins & Marvin, 1832.