Tom Taylor (playwright)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Photo Tom Taylors by Lewis Carroll

Tom Taylor (born October 19, 1817 in Bishopwearmouth , City of Sunderland , † July 12, 1880 in London ) was an English playwright , journalist and biographer . He is best known as the author of the play Our American Cousin (1858). During a performance of this play in Washington, DC in 1865 , the visiting American President Abraham Lincoln was shot.

Life

Tom Taylor, son of a German, attended school in Sunderland , then studied first at the University of Glasgow , then from 1837 in Cambridge and became a Fellow of Trinity College . He then settled in London, where he held the professorship of English literature at University College from 1844 to 1845 . He gave up her practice as a lawyer and was admitted to the Middle Temple Bar in November 1846 . In 1850 he entered the civil service and became assistant secretary, in 1854 secretary in the health department; as such he wrote Lectures on sanitary laws . When the health department was dissolved in 1858, he was transferred to a department in the Ministry of the Interior and retired in 1876. He died in London on July 12, 1880 at the age of 62 and was buried in Brompton Cemetery .

Taylor had shown talent for the dramatic subject from an early age. Four of his antics were performed at the Lyceum Theater in 1844; In 1845 he had his first success with To parents and guardians . Since then he has published over 100 pieces, some of them original works, some of them adaptations from French, from all areas of farce, comedy, drama and higher drama . He was particularly characterized by lively, witty dialogues, apt wit, easy combination skills, and stage agility. Occasionally he also succeeded in the higher dramatic style, as in the historical dramas Twixt Ax and crown (1870) and Joan of Arc (1871). He did his best in comedy and bourgeois drama, if he didn't get lost in the sensational play. He wrote some burlesques with Albert Smith and Charles Kenny, and he worked with Charles Reade on Masks and faces (1852).

In addition to those already mentioned, Taylor's most important dramas, comedies and plays include:

  • The vicar of Wakefield , 1850
  • Plot and passion , 1853
  • Still waters run deep , 1855
  • Retribution , 1856
  • Victims , 1857
  • Our American cousin , 1858, staged by Laura Keene in New York City
  • The contested election , 1859
  • New men and old acres , 1859
  • Nine points of the law , 1859
  • The Overland route , 1860
  • Ticket of leave man , 1863
  • The fool's revenge , 1869
  • Anne Boleyn , 1875

Taylor had also started a career as a journalist when he first came to London in the late 1830s. Soon he was writing editorials for the Morning Chronicle and the Daily News . He was a staff member of Punch and from 1874 to 1880 as the successor to Shirley Brooks head of this magazine. He also had some talent for painting and made significant influence as an art critic for the Times and Graphic . He also became known as the editor of biographies of English artists, of which Autobiography of the painter BR Haydon (3 vols., 1853), Autobiography and Correspondence of CR Leslie (1860), Life and times of Sir Joshua Reynolds (begun by Leslie, continued by Tom Taylor, 1865) and the Catalog of the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds (London 1869) deserve mention. He also edited with a foreword Pen Sketches from a Vanished Hand, selected from Papers of the late Mortimer Collins .

literature

personal data
SURNAME Taylor, Tom
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English playwright, journalist and biographer
DATE OF BIRTH October 19, 1817
PLACE OF BIRTH Bishopwearmouth
DATE OF DEATH July 12, 1880
Place of death London