Charles H. Taylor, whose newspaper innovations in the last quarter of the nineteenth century helped to change the character of American journalism, was editor and publisher of the Boston Globe for more than forty years. His introduction in New England of unbiased reporting, emphasis on local events and working-class issues, and courting of women and children as readers upset journalistic tradition in the 1870s and created patterns which became standard for twentieth-century newspapers.

The eldest of seven children, Charles Henry Taylor was born 14 July 1846 in Charlestown, a Boston suburb, where both his father, John Ingalls Taylor, and his grandfather, John Taylor, were employed in the Navy Yard; his mother was Abigail Russell Hapgood Taylor. He had completed Winthrop Grammar School and was near the end of his first year at Charlestown High School when the Civil War began. Too young at fifteen to join the army, he left...