1784-1848; linguist, poet; Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac and Persian; schoolmaster; St. Mary’s Coll., St. Andrews, 1834-48; works incl. The Anster Concert (1811), and Anster Fair (1812); historical and biblical dramas; also wrote a Syriac and Chaldee Grammar (1840).
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Criticism
Colin McKelvie, ‘Jeremy Taylor’s recommendations for a library of Anglican theology (1600),’ Irish Booklore, Vol. 4, no. 2 (1980); P. J. Kavanagh, Voices in Ireland (John Murray 1994), p.19-21; Thomas K. Carroll, Wisdom and Wasteland: Jeremy Taylor in his Prose and Preaching (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2002), 288pp.
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References
Fidelis Morgan, The Female Wits: Women Playwrights on the London Stage 1660-1720 (London: Virago 1981) notes that he was correspondent of Katherine Philips and member of her Friends.
Margaret Drabble, ed., Oxford Companion of English Literature (OUP: 1985); son of barber; after Cambridge with Laud’s patronage, became Fellow of All souls, Oxford; rector of Uppingham, 1638; d. Lisburn and buried in the cathedral there; fame rests on the combined simplicity and splendour of his style, notably in Holy Living and Holy Dying; Liberty is an argument for religious toleration; Eniautos, sermons for the Christian Year (1653); Ductor, ‘a general instrument of moral theology’ (1660); The Worthy Communicant (1660).
Belfast Public Library holds Hugh Ross Williamson, Jeremy Taylor (London: Dennis Dobson [1952]), 179pp, front. (port.), bibl.; also Willmott, Robert Aris, Bishop Jeremy Taylor
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Notes
Kith & kin: James Emerson Tennent (Conservative MP for Belfast) who fought in the Greek War of Independence travelled with W. M. Thackeray to Cairo (see Thackeray, A Thackeray describes in From Cornhill to Cairo). William Tenn[e]nt, owner of the Tempo estate from 1814, was one of the founders of The Northern Star; and see various Tennents in DUB.
Portrait: There is a portrait of Sir James Emmerson Tennent by Patrick MacDowell, marble bust, Belfast Corp.; see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition (Ulster Mus. 1965), 2nd ed. (1848), 311pp.
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