Frances Margaret Taylor - Literary Works

Literary Works

Frances Taylor wrote for the service of the Catholic Church, and also for the financial support of her family, and later of the religious congregation which she founded. Her book Religious Orders was printed by Emily Faithfull’s Victoria Press, which had been established specifically in order to provide employment for women.

Some of her non-fictional works are difficult to categorise, going broadly under the headings of history, travelogue, social commentary, biography and devotional matter. In addition to these and her various fictional works, mainly collections of stories, she wrote numerous articles for Catholic magazines, and was active as a translator from the French.

From January 1863 to June 1871 she was proprietor and editor of the popular Catholic magazine known as The Lamp. In July 1864, in conjunction with the Jesuits, she became founder-editor of the major Catholic literary review The Month, a position which she held for a year. It was in this journal under her editorship that John Henry Newman’s poem The Dream of Gerontius was first published.

In 1884 she helped Fr Dignam to publish his popular Messenger of the Sacred Heart, the organ of the Apostleship of Prayer. Her works also brought her into contact with clerical literary figures, such as Brother Henry Foley SJ, the historian of the Society of Jesus, and Father Matthew Russell SJ, the founder-editor of the Irish Monthly. Most of her published works were initially produced pseudonymously, sometimes appearing initially in journals before publication as books, and their identification and dating is often problematic. Many went through a number of editions.