Thomas Taylor was an English scholar and translator known for his translations of
Plato and the Neoplatonists, especially his translation of the complete works of Plato, published in five volumes in London in 1804. Taylor’s translations are distinctive for their esoteric and Neoplatonic perspective: Taylor was more a devotee than an “objective” presenter, and therefore more a disciple than a pure scholar. Like the New England Transcendentalists who enjoyed his writings, such as
Amos Bronson Alcott and
Ralph Waldo Emerson, he was self-styled, self-taught, working independently outside the walls and sanctions of academe. Emerson, during his second trip to England in 1848, was astonished that Taylor was not better known and respected in his own country.