Professor Eva G R Taylor

Updated August 2023

Eva Taylor was the first woman to hold a Chair in Geography in the UK: at Birkbeck.

Eva G R Taylor worked with R J Unstead on work on regions and within the Birkbeck Geography department.

She was a ground-breaking female geographer and historian.

Regional geography was a key idea in geography for many decades, even through to the 1980s when I started my teaching career.

Source:

British Geography, edited by Robert Steel. (PDF download)

PROFESSOR Eva G. R. Taylor, an Honorary Member of the Institute since 1954, died in Wokingham on 5 July 1966, aged 85. She was a Fellow of Birkbeck College and Victoria Medallist of the Royal Geographical Society. From 1930 to 1934 she was Professor and Head of the Department of Geography in the University of London, and in 1944 became Professor Emeritus.

There are links here to a range of former GA Presidents and also A J Herbertson.

Image source:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/2F941C5513B80DB4D1C8F4BCEF0F6B57/S0373463300042946a.pdf/div-class-title-eva-g-r-taylor-div.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Germaine_Rimington_Taylor

According to this, the first woman to hold an academic chair of geography in the United Kingdom.

From the document above:

In a broadcast talk about town-planning, Professor Taylor once said that to plan a new town on the lines she was criticizing was like 'trying to stop Tommy growing by refusing to buy him a new pair of boots'. It was typical of her forthright use of English. 

Many people know and respect her as a geographer and historian, but to many she is endeared by her absolute mastery of language: no stylist in the prissy sense of the word, but a writer in whom two great literary virtues were eminently found. First, the absolute reflection of the writer in the words—so that her tone and personality come through so unmistakably that no other person could have written them. And secondly, so complete a certainty of what she had to say that the language she used took on a natural, unforced, direct form that gave it immense pungency and punch. 

That clarity of mind extended not simply to the construction of each sentence but to the whole plan of the essay or book—an essentially classical virtue even more admirable when found in a person who had a poor opinion of the exclusively classical—to put it in terms that are probably historically out of date and that would (God rest her) perhaps infuriate her, an Oxford rather than a Cambridge virtue. As a historian, Professor Taylor was constantly dealing with movements, inventions, discoveries, manifesting themselves in persons: and no matter which of her writings you turn to, you will find (and this is what gives her writing such ease and clarity) that she never wrote until she had a clear picture of the personality behind the person. There are no lay figures in her work. It is supreme craftsmanship, even supreme artistry. 

RENE HAGU

Updated August 2023

Obituary in Transactions of the IBG

“Eva Germaine Rimington Taylor.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, no. 45, 1968, pp. 181–86. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/621401. Accessed 24 Aug. 2023.

She was the President of Section E

She started out as a Chemistry Teacher

In 1905, while attending a vacation course in education at Oxford, she was introduced to geographical field studies. Early in 1906, she moved to a teaching post at a convent school in Oxford in order to complete her study for the Diploma in Education. In October of the same year, she became a student at the School of Geography and two years later obtained the Certificate of Regional Geography and the Diploma of Geography, both with a mark of distinction. 

From 1908 to 1910, she served as a private research assistant to A. J. Herbertson who 'considered her the most brilliant and able of the many women students trained under him at Oxford' (H. O. Beckit, in a testimonial dated 27 April 1916). 

She spent the years 1910 to 1916 writing school text-books and drafting wall-maps (in collaboration with J. F. Unstead whom she first met at Oxford in 1906); and in starting her family. From 1916 to 1918, she lectured in geography and in educational method at Clapham Training College for Teachers and at the Froebel Educational Institute. In 1920, she gave a course of lectures at Queen Mary College (then the East London College).

Also published in 'The Geographical Teacher' - 1916

Taylor, E. G. R. “THE FIRST STEPS IN GEOGRAPHY TEACHING.” The Geographical Teacher, vol. 8, no. 4, 1916, pp. 224–30. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40554496. Accessed 24 Aug. 2023.

Worth a read.

Source:

Beaver, S. H. “Geography in the British Association for the Advancement of Science.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 148, no. 2, 1982, pp. 173–81. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/633769. Accessed 24 Aug. 2023.

Eva Taylor lectures were started in 1960.

The one described here was chaired by another former GA President: Michael Wise.

Of the speaker here he described his work during the war...

Wise, M. J., et al. “Planning and Geography in the Last Three Decades: Discussion.” The Geographical Journal, vol. 137, no. 3, 1971, pp. 330–38. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1797270. Accessed 24 Aug. 2023.

Further memories of Eva Taylor are very much welcome.

"Professor Eva Taylor of Birkbeck College London University, the foremost authority on Tudor geography, arranged a facsimile publication and provided commentary on Forty Plates from John Speed’s Pocket Atlas of 1627.

Professor Emeritus Taylor, 1879–1966, was the first female professor of geography in the U.K., published prolifically, and was also renowned for her unconventional use of a walking stick: 

An academia.edu bio describes how “she used to point it at students when asking a question, as well as using it to hail taxies or even to hook Professor Darby’s leg to join her taxi from a crowd of people waiting.”

“Her writings were characterized by the extensive use of original sources and documentary evidence and they were always a delight to read.” This included “her two monumental volumes of the mathematical practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England (1954), and then those of Hanoverian England (1966)….”

Source: https://simanaitissays.com/2022/03/15/touring-tudor-england-with-professor-eva-taylor-and-google-maps/


And another biography here:

Taylor continued working well into her 80s, dying at Wokingham on July 5, 1966.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/taylor-eva-1879-1966

https://www.hakluyt.com/downloadable_files/Journal/DeClercqTaylor.pdf - an updated version of a lecture given in 2005. Mentions Bill Mead.

She was a partner of one of the Dunhills of tobacco fame it seems.

A Bill Mead mention of her lecturing at the GA Conference here (in 1946 just after WWII)

Another Eva Taylor lecture transcript:

https://www.davidbarrieauthor.org/blog/2022/5/5/sa7v7vbcfpleeb2datally3yqt5u23