Tom Taylor

Taylor, a prolific dramatist, was the editor of Punch from 1874 to 1880. He was educated at Glasgow University, where he distinguished himself as a student; later he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and served for two years as a professor of English at University College, London. When Taylor settled in London, he worked for both the Morning Chronicle and The Daily News. Despite his journalism, however, he is best remembered as the author of more than 100 plays over a 35-year span. While few survive as outstanding literary achievements, Taylor was immensely successful in his own day, and apparently only one of his plays was an outright failure. In 1871 the playwright was accused by the Atheneum of plagiarizing most of his works---a common practice in the early-nineteenth-century theater but less savory during the later Victorian years. Only one-tenth of his plays were adaptations, he replied; the rest were original. Indeed, some of the most popular plays were adaptations of works by Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens. The most successful plays were the domestic comedies Our American Cousin (1858) and The Ticket-of-Leave Man (1863). Our American Cousin is memorable as the play that was being performed at Ford's Theater in Washington the night that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Taylor is also notable for his collaboration with the novelist Charles Reade on a number of historical dramas, the most famous of which is Two Loves and a Life.