Page:Women worth emulating (1877) Internet Archive.djvu/135

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MISSES JANE AND ANNE TAYLOR.
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Both sisters wrote clear, graphic, elegant prose, as well as poetry. Jane's "Contributions of Q.Q." and her story of "Display," and other writings, prove her skill. But Anne was a journalist and a reviewer. She wrote for The Eclectic in its palmy days, when some of the leading minds among our great men—as Revs. John Poster and Robert Hall— were contributors. It was not until the recent publication of Mrs. Gilbert^s Life, one of the most interesting biographies of our time, prolific as it is in this department of writing, that her real genius was known.

Removal to Ongar, in Essex, and the residence there during the last eighteen years of their father's life, has caused people to speak of the household as if Ongar was the only locality associated with their celebrity. It certainly was a very dear and memorable residence to them all, consecrated both by life and death.

On December 24, 1813, Miss Anne Taylor was married to the Rev. J. Gilbert, then the classical tutor at Rotherham College; and for some years after, though her literary pursuits were never entirely relinquished, the cares of a rapidly-increasing and large family demanded her attention, and she proved to them and to their father, a tender guide, instructress, helper, companion, friend—the same inestimable wife and mother that her own early home had possessed. At Rotherham, at Hull, and finally at Nottingham, she was the centre of a