He was born in East Retford, Nottinghamshire, the son of James Taylor and Sarah Drury; his father was a printer and bookseller.
In later years he became Bookseller and Publisher to the then new University of London and, now in formal partnership with James Walton, moved to Upper Gower Street.
After a long bachelor's life fraught with illness and depression, he died at 7 Leonard Place, Kensington, on 5 July 1864 and was buried in the churchyard at Gamston, near Retford, where his tombstone was paid for by the University of London.
[2] After Taylor's death, many of his manuscripts were put up for sale at Sotheby's, but the poets of the Regency era were out of fashion, and the total only fetched about £250.
He says: "Taylor and his disciples urged that the dimensions of the Pyramid showed the divine origin of the British units of length.