1693), a versatile artisan, and the writer Ann Taylor (née Cooke), he was born on 13 December 1730 in the parish of St. Michael in Bedwardine, in the city of Worcester.
Taylor moved on to book illustration, working on William Owen Pughe's Dictionary and Andrew Tooke's Pantheon.
Soon after its incorporation, in January 1765, Taylor was admitted a fellow of the Society of Artists, and in 1774 he was appointed secretary as successor to John Hamilton, being the third to hold that post.
Among Taylor's other personal friends were David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, Francesco Bartolozzi, Richard Smirke, and Henry Fuseli.
He also designed and engraved plates for The Fool of Quality, a frontispiece to William Robertson's Charles V (1772), cuts for Sparrman’s ‘ Cape of Good Hope, Clavigero's Mexico, Chambers’s Cyclopædia, and numerous other publications.
Among his best-regarded engravings were those for his friend Samuel Richardson's novel Sir Charles Grandison, the plates for which he exhibited with the Society of Artists in 1778.