Rachel Annand Taylor, 1876-1960

Rachel Annand Taylor was a student at Aberdeen University from 1894 until 1897, when attending Aberdeen Training Centre for Teachers. She was one of the first women to take a course in Arts after the introduction of the regulations of 1892 admitting women to graduation, although she did not graduate. She taught for some time in Aberdeen before her marriage to Alexander C. Taylor in 1901, after which she went to Dundee and later to London, where she died in 1960.

She published four volumes of poetry, Poems (London: Bodley Head, 1904); Rose and Vine (London: Elkin Mathews, 1909); The Hours of Fiametta (London: Elkin Mathews, 1910); and The End of Fiametta (London: Richards, 1923). In addition, she produced three studies, Aspects of the Italian Renaissance (London: Richards, 1923); Leonardo the Florentine (London: Richards, 1927) and Dunbar, the poet and his period (London: Faber, 1931). In 1943 Aberdeen University awarded her an honorary LL.D, on the 50th anniversary of the admission of women to the University. Appreciations of her work by Sir Herbert Grierson and Alexander Keith have been published in the Aberdeen University Review, 30 (1942-1944), 152-156; and 31 (1944-1946), 211.