A complete and uniform edition of all the published works of Thomas Taylor the ‘English Platonist’, sewn hardback in modern type face on wood-free paper. The Series comprises 33 volumes – in total some 17,000 pages – which presents all the philosophical translations and original writings of Thomas Taylor. Several smaller works originally published by Taylor are gathered together into particular volumes. Where possible the series presents major texts with standard pagination (for example, Stephanus numbering for Plato, and Bekker numbering for Aristotle).
Thomas Taylor was the first to translate the whole of Plato into English (updating for his 1804 publication a few of the earlier translations of his friend Floyer Sydenham) and also the first to translate the whole of the surviving works of Aristotle. He also translated much of Proclus, Plotinus, Iamblichus and other Platonists. His output published between 1780 and 1834 represents an extraordinary gift to the English reading public underpinned by a profound understanding of Platonic philosophy. Immediately after his death in 1835 his library and collection of manuscripts were auctioned: one of the lots offered in the auction was the right to republish his entire output in a uniform edition – this went unsold and his wish that such a project be undertaken was left unfulfilled until the Prometheus Trust determined to do so in 1994.
The continuing importance of Taylor’s translations of Plato and Aristotle rests not only on his own understanding of Platonism but also on his use of the late Platonic (“neoplatonic”) commentators’ writings as extensive notes to the text.