Susannah Taylor

Susannah Taylor or Susannah Cook (29 March 1755 – June, 1823) was a British socialite and correspondent.

Susannah Taylor
Drawing by Henry Meyer
Born29 March 1755
Norwich, England
DiedJune 1823
NationalityBritish
SpouseJohn Taylor
Children7, including John Taylor, Richard Taylor, Edward Taylor, Philip Taylor, Sarah Austin

Life

Susannah was the daughter of John Cook and Aramathea Maria Phillips. She was born in Norwich in 1755.[1]

In 1777 she married John Taylor (1750–1826) who was a wool merchant and hymn writer. Susannah was a Bluestocking with strong political (Whig) beliefs.[2][3] Susannah and John's home was the place for gatherings which discussed radical politics. Guests included Sir James Edward Smith, the botanist, Henry Crabb Robinson, the barrister, Robert Southey, poet laureate, Cecilia Windham, wife of William Windham and Sir James Mackintosh. Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester and William Keppel, 4th Earl of Albemarle, both Whigs, are recorded as being entertained by Susannah in her drawing room after completing their routine farming business at the marketplace in Norwich.[4][5] Mackintosh described the house as a "haven" with Susannah described as intelligent and knowledgeable.[6] It was here that she met her friend and fellow Bluestocking, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, a close friend of Sarah Martineau who was the aunt of Susannah's husband, John.[7][8] The Taylor and the Martineau families were important political allies.[9]

Others guests at the house were William Enfield, and some early supporters of the French Revolution: Edward Rigby, Norwich physician James Alderson and his daughter Amelia.[10] Susannah was said to have danced for joy when she heard of the storming of the Bastille.[1] Susannah was called Madame Roland by her close friends as she was said to look like the French revolutionist.[1]

John and Susannah raised seven children to be honest, to avoid debt, and to take control of their business dealings. Their children were John (1779–1863),[11] Richard (1781–1858), Edward (1784–1863), Philip (1786–1870),[11] Susan (born 1788), married Whig politician Henry Reeve, Arthur (born 1790), a printer and F.S.A., author of The Glory of Regality (London, 1820), and Papers in relation to the Antient Topography of the Eastern Counties (London, 1869), and Sarah, wife of John Austin, the jurist.[12][13] Susannah was responsible for the education of her daughters.

Susannah died in June 1823 and there is a memorial to her and her husband inside the Octagon Chapel, Norwich.[1]

References
  1. Charlotte Fell-Smith, ‘Taylor, John (1750–1826)’, rev. M. Clare Loughlin-Chow, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 9 May 2015
  2. Downing, B. (2013). Queen Bee of Tuscany. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. p. 16. ISBN 9781429942959. Retrieved 16 June 2023. ...was a fiesty bluestocking named Susannah Cook, who in 1777 married John Taylor, a wool merchant...
  3. Federici, E. (2021). New Perspectives on Gender. Taylor and Francis. p. 36. ISBN 9781000467727. Retrieved 19 June 2023. Susannah and her husband John Taylor (1750–1826) were leading members of the ... Their household was a place for intellectual discussions by Whig and dissenting intellectuals where her two daughters and her five sons were stimulated to ...
  4. Ross, J. (1893). Three Generations of. T. Fisher Unwin. p. 45. Retrieved 20 June 2023.
  5. Janet Ross, Three Generations of English Women; memoirs and correspondence of Susannah Taylor, Sarah Austin, and Lady Duff Gordon (1893); archive.org.
  6. Montagu, B (1835). Life of Sir James Mackintosh. ISBN 9780203211670.
  7. Di Giacomo, P (2016). ""There were banquets and parties every day": the importance of British female circles for the Serbian Enlightenment - A study of Dositej Obradović, Serbia's First Minister of Education (1739/42-1811)" (PDF). Књиженство (Knjiženstvo). Università degli Studi “G. d’Annunzio”. 6: 13. Retrieved 12 June 2023. Dositej Obradović...The Unitarian Sarah Meadows Martineau (ca 1725-1800), who sent her children to Anna Laetitia Barbauld's school in Palgrave, also lived in Norwich. Martineau was a relative of the Taylors, and thanks to her Anna Laetitia Barbauld was able to meet Susannah Taylor...important of these was The Blue Stockings Society, founded in the early 1750s...The women that he met within the Scottish community and among the Unitarians such as Mrs Livie and her sister Mrs Taylor, transferred to Obradović the knowledge they had gained from frequenting the feminist circles of Elizabeth Carter, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Vessey, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck Sarah Fielding, Hannah More, Clara Reeve, Amelia Opie, Sarah Meadows Martineau. Their knowledge of the then current literary and cultural scene enabled Obradović to supply the works that he took from England and translated and adapted for the Serbian nation.
  8. Federici, E. (2021). New Perspectives on Gender and Translation. Routledge, New York. p. 36. ISBN 9781000467727. Retrieved 16 June 2023. Susannah and her husband John Taylor (1750–1826) were leading members of the Unitarian congregation of Norwich... intellectual achievement as professional writers through her friends Anna Laetitia Barbauld (nee Aikin, 1743–1825), Amelia Opie (nee Alderson, 1769–1853),...Susannah and her husband were related to the Martineaus - i.e. Martineau family...for intellectual discussions by Whigs...
  9. Women in British Politics, 1780-1860: The Power of the Petticoat. Palgrave Macmillan. 2016. p. 72. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
  10. Jenny Graham (2000). The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789–1799. Vol. 1. University Press of America. p. 107. ISBN 0-7618-1484-1.
  11. "Taylor, Philip" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
  12. Philip Meadows Taylor, A Memoir of the Taylor Family of Norwich(1866), 2, 9–13.
  13. "Taylor, John (1750-1826)" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
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