author
Jane Taylor
1783–1824
Best known for the words of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” this English writer helped shape early children’s poetry with work that was gentle, lively, and easy to remember. She also wrote novels, moral tales, and religious verse, often in close literary partnership with her family.
4 Audiobooks
Eyes and No Eyes, and Other Stories
by John Aikin, Mrs. (Anna Letitia) Barbauld, Mrs. (Jane Haldimand) Marcet, Jane Taylor
Little Ann, and Other Poems
by Jane Taylor, Ann Taylor
City Scenes; or, a peep into London
by Ann Taylor, Jane Taylor
Rhymes for the nursery
by Ann Taylor, Jane Taylor
About the author
Born in London on September 23, 1783, she grew up in a creative and religious household led by Isaac Taylor, an engraver, artist, and minister, and Ann Martin Taylor, a writer. Along with her sister Ann, she became part of an unusually literary family whose books for young readers were widely read in the early nineteenth century.
She is most often remembered for the poem later known as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” first published as “The Star” in Rhymes for the Nursery (1806). But her work ranged beyond nursery verse: she also published fiction, essays, and devotional writing, and contributed to the growth of children’s literature at a time when the genre was still taking shape.
Jane Taylor died on April 13, 1824. Although some of her work was long confused with that of her sister because they published together, her writing has endured through one of the most familiar poems in English and through her broader contribution to early literature for children.