Sir Henry Taylor (18 October 1800 – 27 March 1886) was an English dramatist and poet, Colonial Office official, and man of letters. Early life Henry Taylor was born on 18 October 1800 in Bishop Middleham. He was the third son of George Taylor Sr and Eleanor Ashworth, who died when he was an infant. His father remarried Jane Mills in 1818, and the family then moved to Witton-le-Wear. George Taylor Sr's friend Charles Arbuthnot found vocational positions in London for Henry Taylor and his elder brother, George Taylor Jr. In 1817, the pair along with their second brother, William, a medical student, went to London. Soon afterwards, all three siblings contracted typhus fever, and both his brothers died within a fortnight. Following this tragedy, Henry Taylor then accepted work in the Colonial administration of Barbados. Taylor's place in Barbados was abolished in 1820, subsequent to which he returned to his father's house. At the Colonial Office Taylor obtained a clerkship in the Colonial Office, where he subsequently worked from 1824 until 1872, through Henry Holland. In this position Taylor served under the permanent secretary Robert William Hay. Taylor was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the 1869 Birthday Honours. Hay's successors included James Stephen, Herman Merivale and Frederic Rogers. Hay, Stephen, Taylor and James Spedding, who also worked in the Office, each proposed reform. During the 1830s, Taylor and Stephen endorsed the abolitionist contentions of Viscount Howick, as a consequence of which Stephen replaced Hay. Taylor died on 27 March 1886. Literary connections Taylor wrote Byronic poems and an article on Thomas Moore, which in 1822 was accepted for the Quarterly Review by William Gifford. Returning to London in October 1823, he found that Gifford had printed another article of his, on Lord John Russell. Taylor had also contributed to the London Magazine, and had an offer of the editorship. His father George was a friend of William Wordsworth. In 1823, on a visit to the Lake District, Henry Taylor made the acquaintance of Robert Southey, and they became friends. Jane Taylor had a first cousin, Isabella Fenwick (1783–1856), whom he introduced to the Wordsworth family. She became a close friend of Wordsworth in later life, as she had been of Taylor up to the time of his marriage. Though Fenwick was not herself a writer, her friendship left an