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Bayard Taylor (11 January 1825-19 December 1878), known in his time as "the Great American Traveler" (a title he hated), and as a poet of considerable technical skill, remains alive today largely through his translation of Goethe's Faust (both parts) in the original metres. This was considered a tour de force at the time, and is still regarded as a respectable and accurate job, though others have since produced more colloquial translations. Born in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, into a family of English-German ancestry and Quaker leanings, he was one of six surviving children of a farmer who later became sheriff and justice of the peace. Taylor showed sings of precocity and a profound lack of interest in farming; he published his first article at fifteen in a local newspaper, and his first poem at sixteen in the Saturday Evening Post of Philadelphia. College was financially impossible for him, and at seventeen he was apprenticed to a printer in West Chester, during which time he published his first volume of poems by subscription.
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