John Edward Taylor (11 September 1791 – 6 January 1844) was an English business tycoon, editor, publisher and member of The Portico Library,[1] who was the founder of the Manchester Guardian newspaper in 1821.

A moderate supporter of reform, from 1815 Taylor was a member of a group of Nonconformist Liberals, meeting in the Manchester home of John Potter, termed the Little Circle.

Taylor witnessed the Peterloo massacre in 1819, but was unimpressed by its leaders, writing:[5] They have appealed not to the reason but to the passions and the suffering of their abused and credulous fellow-countrymen, from whose ill-requited industry they extort for themselves the means of a plentiful and comfortable existenceHowever, the radical press in Manchester, particularly Manchester Observer supported the protests, and it was not until the Observer was closed by successive police prosecutions that the road was clear for a newspaper closer to Taylor's liberal-minded mill-owning friends.

John Edward Taylor is buried in the Rusholme Road Cemetery (also known as the Dissenters Burial Ground and now Gartside Gardens, in Chorlton-on-Medlock), alongside his first wife Sophia Russell Scott.

He had no children; after his death the Evening News passed into the hands of his nephews in the Allen family, while the Guardian was sold to its editor, his cousin C. P. Scott.