SOURCE: Introduction to Selected Letters of Bayard Taylor, Bucknell University Press, 1997, pp. 17-31.

In the following introduction, Wermuth offers a survey of Taylor's career and his place in the literary climate of the 1800s.

“Well—if I were to write about myself for six hours, it would all come to this: that Life is, for me, the developing, asserting and establishing of my own Entelcheia—the making all that is possible out of such powers as I may have, without violently forcing or disturbing them. You have often, no doubt, wondered at and condemned the variety of things I have either wilfully attempted or been compelled to do by the necessities of my life. I see the use of all these attempts now, when I am beginning to concentrate instead of scatter: if I am capable of good and lasting work, there is nothing I have hitherto done...