Taylor, Bayard

The most famous American travel writer of his day, Taylor strongly supported the Union with poetry and lectures in 1861. He served Lincoln as a diplomat and wrote Ballad of Abraham Lincoln, a poem for children, in 1869. He is said also to have written America's first gay novel, Joseph and His Friend, in 1870.
Life Span
to
    Full name
    Bayard Taylor
    Place of Birth
    Burial Place
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Free State
    No. of Spouses
    2
    No. of Children
    1
    Family
    Joseph Taylor (father), Rebecca Way (mother), May Agnew (first wife), Maria Hansen (second wife)
    Occupation
    Diplomat
    Educator
    Journalist
    Writer or Artist
    Relation to Slavery
    White non-slaveholder
    Political Parties
    Republican
    Government
    Lincoln Administration (1861-65)
    Hayes Administration (1877-81)
    Diplomat

    Bayard Taylor (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    During the Civil War Taylor served as Washington correspondent for the Tribune until, in May 1862, he was appointed secretary of legation under the U.S. minister to Russia at St. Petersburg--a post he resigned in 1863, after serving with some distinction. He was influential in persuading Russia to extend support and friendship to the Union but not specific aid. He returned home to publish Hannah Thurston (1863), the first of four competent but unremarkable novels. In 1867 the Taylors were off for Europe once again, and Bayard nearly died there from a bout of Roman fever. From 1868 to 1870 he dedicated himself to finishing the task for which he is now most famous: a translation in original meters of Goethe's Faust (2 vols., 1870-1871), which was for years regarded as the finest. From 1870 to 1877 Taylor was a nonresident professor of German literature at Cornell University, and as his fame in Germany grew he planned to write biographies of both Goethe and Schiller. In 1876 he delivered the prestigious Centennial Ode and published what many critics today regard as his most interesting work, the satirical volume of poems entitled The Echo Club and Other Literary Diversions.
    Cary Wolfe, "Taylor, Bayard," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/16/16-01608.html.
    How to Cite This Page: "Taylor, Bayard," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/23103.