Ida Ashworth Taylor

Ida Alice Ashworth Taylor (1847–1929) was an English novelist and biographer.^[1]

Ida Taylor was the daughter of the playwright Henry Taylor and Alice Spring Rice, daughter of Thomas Spring Rice, 1st Baron Monteagle. A Catholic convert, Taylor wrote for periodicals including The Dublin Review and The Nineteenth Century.^[2] For most of her adult life she lived with her younger sister, Una, in Montpelier Square in London. The pair "conducted a literary salon, of which the characteristic notes were intellectual interest and Irish warm-heartedness".^[3]

She died at her home in Wootton Wood in the New Forest.^[3]

Works

Novels

• Venus's Doves, 3 vols., London: Hurst and Blackett, 1884
• Snow in Harvest, 3 vols., London, 1885
• Allegiance: a Novel, 2 vols., London: R. Bentley, 1886
• (with U. Ashworth Taylor, her sister) A Social Heretic, London: Hurst and Blackett, 1889
• Vice Valentine, London: Ward and Downey, 1890

Non-fiction

• (ed. and abridged) The life of Queen Elizabeth by Agnes Strickland, 1900.
• The Silver Legend: Saints for Children, St. Louis: B. Herder, 1902.
• Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, London: Methuen, 1902.
• The life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 1763-1798, London: Hutchinson & Co., 1903.
• Revolutionary types, London: Duckworth and Co., 1904. With an introduction by R. B. Cunninghame Graham.
• The life of Queen Henrietta Maria, London: Hutchinson & Co., 1905.
• Queen Hortense and her friends, 1783-1837, London: Hutchinson, 1907. 2 vols.
• Lady Jane Grey and Her Times, London: Hutchinson, 1908.^[4]
• The cardinal democrat, Henry Edward Manning, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1908.
• (ed.) The maxims of Madame Swetchine, London: Burns & Oates, 1908.
• Robert Southwell, S.J.: priest and poet, London: Sands, 1908.
• Christina of Sweden, London: Hutchinson, 1909.
• The making of a king, London: Hutchinson & Co., 1910.
• Life of Madame Roland, 1911.
• The life of James IV, London: Hutchinson & Co., 1913. With an introduction by Sir George Douglas, Bart.
• The tragedy of an army: La Vendée in 1793, London: Hutchinson & Co., 1913.
• Joan of Arc; soldier and saint, Edinburgh: Sands & Co., 1920.

References

1. Palumbo-De Simone, Christine. "Taylor, Ida Alice Ashworth". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/46564. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
2. The Catholic who's who & yearbook, 1910.
3. 'Miss Ida Ashworth Taylor', The Times, 22 October 1929
4. "Review: Lady Jane Grey and Her Times by I. A. Taylor". The Athenaeum (4197): 409–410. April 4, 1908.