Taylor, Robert H., collector.

Robert Hill Taylor (1908-1985), Princeton University Class of 1930, amassed a distinguished collection of rare books, manuscripts, and drawings during more than 50 years of active collecting. The collection began ca. 1930, and was eventually moved to Princeton in l960 and housed in the former Princetoniana Room in Firestone Library in l972. The heart of his collection consists of the works of Anthony Trollope (Taylor's favorite author), Alexander Pope, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, George Gordon Byron, and Max Beerbohm. As Taylor himself once stated: "I felt that these were representative authors of their respective periods who could still be collected with some approach to completeness, and so I have tried to specialize in them." His first gift to the Princeton University Library, made in February 1950, was the first edition of Daniel Defoe's THE TRUE-BORN ENGLISHMAN (1700). Starting in 1958, Taylor donated his holdings of Victorian fiction (which included numerous presentation copies of Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Charles Reade) to the Morris L. Parrish Collection of Victorian Novelists (C0171), along with several important Anthony Trollope items from his collection. In addition, Taylor provided the necessary funds that enabled the Library's Department of Rare Books and Special Collections to purchase a variety of special items, such as the Tollemache Chaucer, a fifteenth-century manuscript of The Canterbury Tales. Besides his numerous and generous gifts, Taylor was an active participant in the Princeton University library community--giving lectures, selecting and assisting with Library exhibitions, and contributing scholarly articles to the PRINCETON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY CHRONICLE. In addition, he served as the chairman of the Council of the Friends of the Library for 26 years. In 1975, Taylor was fittingly honored with the Donald F. Hyde Award of Princeton University for Distinction in Book Collection and Service to the Community of Scholars. He died in Princeton on May 5, 1985, but his legacy lives on through the distinguished and invaluable collection that bears his name and continues to grow.