1800s Two Autographed Signed Letter (ASL) of Stanford Rivers' Author, Artist and Inventor, Isaac Taylor

On offer are two autograph letters signed:

1) Autograph letter signed. Two pages, 4to. Dated "Stanford Rivers, Monday morning, [no year]." A friendly letter, making a visiting arrangement.

2) Autograph letter signed. Three pages, 4to. Dated "Amen Corner" [February, 1835] [with one page of draft response from the recipient on fourth page.] Concerning the steeling of a legal matter.

Isaac Taylor (1787-1865) was an English philosophical and historical writer, artist, and inventor. In 1825 he settled at Stanford Rivers, about two miles from Ongar, in a rambling old-fashioned farmhouse. Taylor was interested in mechanical devices and inventions, and he had workshop that he fitted up at Stanford Rivers. Early in life he invented a beer-tap (patented 20 November 1824) which came into wide use, and he designed a machine for engraving on copper (pat. 12248, 21 August 1848). Originally trained as an artist, Isaac Taylor at an early age abandoned his profession for that literary career in which so many members of his family had attained distinction. Taylor translated and wrote books including, Natural History of Enthusiasm (published in 1829 anonymously) and was reprinted with eight or nine editions.

Taylor was granted a civil list pension of £200 in 1862 as acknowledgment of his services to literature, and he died at Stanford Rivers three years later, on 28 June 1865