T aylor, W illiam

Abstract

William Taylor (1765–1836), usually known as William Taylor of Norwich, emerged as the most important British book reviewer in the 1790s, developing what Hazlitt would acclaim in The Spirit of the Age as ‘philosophical criticism’. He continued to be a prolific contributor to such liberal publications as the Monthly Review and the Monthly Magazine until the mid‐1820s. Taylor's speciality was German literature, on which he was the leading British authority before Carlyle. Georg Herzfeld, in the major German study, describes Taylor as ‘the man who first emphatically directed the attention of his countrymen to the importance of the German language and literature’ (2007: 10). George Borrow, a protégé, later described Taylor as ‘the founder of the Anglo‐German school in England’ (1923, vol. 6: 219). Taylor is also notable for his provocative and controversial biblical criticism.