author
Henry Osborn Taylor
1856–1941
A lawyer who left practice to pursue history full time, he became one of America’s most admired interpreters of the ancient and medieval world. His books are known for combining wide learning with an unusually humane interest in how people thought, believed, and imagined.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in New York City in 1856, Henry Osborn Taylor studied at Harvard and Columbia and began his career in law before turning decisively toward scholarship. He went on to build a reputation as a historian and man of letters, with a special interest in the intellectual and spiritual life of earlier civilizations.
Taylor is best remembered for works such as Ancient Ideals, The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages, and especially The Medieval Mind, a major study of medieval thought and culture. Rather than treating history as a list of events, he was drawn to the inner life of an age—its ideals, emotions, beliefs, and habits of mind.
He later served as president of the American Historical Association, and contemporaries remembered him as one of the most distinguished historians in America. He died in 1941, leaving behind books that still appeal to readers who enjoy history written with both seriousness and literary grace.