Selected Writings

by Thomas Taylor, Kathleen Raine (Editor), George Mills Harper (Editor)

This volume makes available to the modern reader selected writings of Thomas Taylor, the eighteenth-century English Platonist. TO Taylor we are indebted for the first full translation into English of Plato and Aristotle. Platonism, as Taylor saw it, was an informing principle, transmitted through a "golden chain of philosophers," a doctrine received by Socrates and Plato from the Orphic and Pythagorean past and transmitted to the future. It emerged again and again, enriched in the School of Alexandria, in Renaissance art, in the works of Spenser, Shelley, Yeats. Kathleen Raine is well known as a poet. GEorge Mills Harper is Professor of English, University of Florida. Bollingen Series LXXXVIII.



Originally published in 1969.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

544 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1969

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database

Thomas Taylor was an English translator and Neoplatonist, the first to translate into English the complete works of Aristotle and of Plato, as well as the Orphic fragments. He published prolifically for over 50 years.

Reviews

[Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book appears to be out of print and I see that it can be purchased in the States for $125. I am glad to say my copy was cheaper than that! Thomas Taylor dedicated his voluminous works to The Sacred Majesty of Truth (a phrase a great beauty). He is hardly known today, but was, and remains, one of the foremost scholars of Platonic and Neoplatonic philosphy and Theology. Recent work by the Prometheus Trust have brought all his writings into print for the first time ever. However, Katherine Raine's selection is a valuable resource if you can get hold of it.

[Dionysius the Areopagite · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly great man and selection(s) with commendable supplements solidifying that Thomas Taylor was and is both incomparable and immutable. One is tempted to note that an inexpensive version must be printed; but then one realizes one is the sole person who has any interest in the Platonist Taylor, and hence astronomical malady. Thus, instead of making notes seeking a $60.00 slash on the book's cost, one ought instead slash a bull's throat in pagan sacrifice to Apis and Neito, as the gods and Taylor would have it.