Taylor was born on January 11, 1825, in
Kennett Square in
Chester County, Pennsylvania. He was the fourth son, the first to survive to maturity, of the
Quaker couple Joseph and Rebecca (née Way) Taylor. His mother was of half Swiss origin His father was a wealthy farmer. Bayard's youngest brother was
Charles Frederick Taylor, a
Union Army colonel killed in action at the
Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. Bayard received his early instruction in an academy at
West Chester, Pennsylvania, and later at nearby
Unionville. At the age of seventeen, he was apprenticed to a printer in West Chester. The influential critic and editor
Rufus Wilmot Griswold encouraged him to write poetry. The volume that resulted,
Ximena, or the Battle of the Sierra Morena, and other Poems, was published in 1844 and dedicated to Griswold. Using the money from his poetry and an advance for travel articles, he visited parts of England, France, Germany and Italy, making largely pedestrian tours for almost two years. He sent accounts of his travels to the
New York Tribune,
The Saturday Evening Post, and
Gazette of the United States. That same year,
Horace Greeley, editor of the
New York Tribune, hired Taylor and sent him to
California to report on the
gold rush. He returned by way of
Mexico and published another two-volume collection of travel essays,
El Dorado; or, Adventures in the Path of Empire (1850). Within two weeks of release, the books sold 10,000 copies in the U.S. and 30,000 in Great Britain. That same year, Taylor won a popular competition sponsored by
P. T. Barnum to write an ode for the "Swedish Nightingale", singer
Jenny Lind. His poem "Greetings to America" was set to music by
Julius Benedict and performed by the singer at numerous concerts on her tour of the United States. In 1851 he traveled to Egypt, where he followed the
Nile River as far as 12° 30' N. He also traveled in Palestine and Mediterranean countries, writing poetry based on his experiences.
"In August 1852, upon my return to Europe from a trip to the East, I finally had the opportunity to visit Greece. We sailed between the fortresses guarding the entrance of the Dardanelles and made a stop at Scio before anchoring in the harbor of Syra. The Piraeus was just twelve hours away, but considering my recent bout of fever in Constantinople, I hesitated to face the scorching summer heat of Athens. We lifted anchor and set our course southward, passing through the clusters of islands in the Cyclades, under a clear sky and over a sea of the most brilliant blue. Moreover, I had reasons to hasten my journey to Italy and Germany." Toward the end of 1852, he sailed from England to
Calcutta, and then to China, where he joined the expedition of Commodore
Matthew Calbraith Perry to Japan. In October 1857, he married Maria Hansen, the daughter of the Danish/German astronomer
Peter Hansen. The couple spent the following winter in Greece. In 1859 Taylor returned to the American West and lectured at
San Francisco. In 1862, he was appointed to the U.S. diplomatic service as secretary of legation at
St. Petersburg, and acting minister to Russia for a time during 1862–3 after the resignation of Ambassador
Simon Cameron. He published his first novel
Hannah Thurston in 1863. The newspaper
The New York Times first praised him for "break[ing] new ground with such assured success". A second much longer appreciation in the same newspaper was thoroughly negative, describing "one pointless, aimless situation leading to another of the same stamp, and so on in maddening succession". It concluded: "The platitudes and puerilities which might otherwise only raise a smile, when confronted with such pompous pretensions, excite the contempt of every man who has in him the feeblest instincts of common honesty in literature." It proved successful enough for his publisher to announce another novel from him the next year. In 1864 Taylor and his wife Maria returned to the U.S. In 1866, Taylor traveled to Colorado and made a large loop through the northern mountains on horseback with a group that included William Byers, editor of the newspaper
Rocky Mountain News. His letters describing this adventure were later compiled and published as
Colorado: A Summer Trip. In 1866, Taylor popularized outlaw
James Fitzpatrick as swashbuckling hero Sandy Flash in his novel
The Story of Kennett, set in
Revolutionary War-era Pennsylvania. Taylor's novel
Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania (1870), first serialized in
The Atlantic, was described as a story of young man in rural Pennsylvania and "the troubles which arise from the want of a broader education and higher culture." The story is believed to be based on the poets
Fitz-Greene Halleck and
Joseph Rodman Drake, and since the late 20th century has been called America's first gay novel. (A revealing letter of 1847 survives from Taylor to the twenty-three-year-old Edward Paxson, later Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in which he writes: 'Dear Paxson: Your interesting and astonishing epistle was received a little while ago...Now, that you yourself wear the fetters matrimonial, you are not going to dream me into them so easily.') Taylor spoke at the dedication of a monument to Halleck in his native town,
Guilford, Connecticut. He said that in establishing this monument to an American poet "we symbolize the intellectual growth of the American people.... The life of the poet who sleeps here represents the long period of transition between the appearance of American poetry and the creation of an appreciative and sympathetic audience for it." Taylor imitated and parodied the writings of various poets in
Diversions of the Echo Club (London, 1873; Boston, 1876). In 1874 Taylor traveled to
Iceland to report for the
Tribune on the one thousandth anniversary of the first European settlement there. On July 4, 1876, at the
Centennial Exposition in
Philadelphia, Bayard recited his
National Ode to an enthusiastic crowd of more than four thousand, the largest audience for a poetry reading in the United States to that date and a record which stood until 1961. The ode was written at the request of the exhibition's organizers, after the task had been declined by several other eminent poets, including
John Greenleaf Whittier and
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The work was reprinted in newspapers across the country and later published as a book in two separate editions.
"In 1878, when traveling on the same ship from the United States to Europe, he told me, "I am going abroad to visit some countries I have not seen before. I plan to explore them on foot. I have been working for a long time and need some rest. Additionally, I aim to learn the German language and further develop my skills in art."" Taylor's travel writings were widely quoted by congressmen seeking to defend racial discrimination.
Richard Townshend (D-IL) quoted passages from Taylor such as "the Chinese are morally, the most debased people on the face of the earth" and "A Chinese city is the greatest of all abominations." A few months after arriving in Berlin, Taylor died there on December 19, 1878. His body was returned to the U.S. and buried in Longwood Cemetery, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.
The New York Times published his obituary on its front page, referring to him as "a great traveler, both on land and paper". Shortly after his death,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a memorial poem in Taylor's memory, at the urging of
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. ==Legacy and honors==