Tom Taylor

Tom Taylor (19 October 1817 – 12 July 1880) was an English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine. He wrote about 100 plays during his career, including Our American Cousin (1858), famous as the play which was being performed in the presence of US President Abraham Lincoln when he was assassinated in 1865.

Taylor was born into a wealthy family at Bishopwearmouth, present day Sunderland, in north-east England. His father owned a brewery. After attending school at the Grange in Sunderland, and studying for two sessions at the University of Glasgow, he became a student of Cambridge University's Trinity College in 1837. In 1840 he received a B.A. with honors in both classics and mathematics, and a master's degree in 1843.

Taylor began his working life as a journalist. Soon after moving to London, he wrote for the Morning Chronicle and the Daily News. He was on the staff of Punch magazine until 1874, when he succeeded Charles William Shirley Brooks as editor. He was also an art critic for The Times and The Graphic.

At the same time, for two years, he was a professor of English literature at University College, London. He was accepted as a lawyer of Middle Temple in November 1846, and practised the northern circuit until he became assistant secretary of the Board of Health in 1850. On the reconstruction of the Board in 1854 he was made Secretary, and on its abolition his services were transferred to a department of the Home Office, retiring on a pension in 1876.

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