Sarah Austin
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Sarah Austin (1793, Norwich - August 8, 1867, Weybridge, Surrey) was an English author, the daughter of John Taylor (d. 1826), a wool-stapler and member of the well-known Taylor family of Norwich.
Her great grandfather, Dr John Taylor (1694-1761), had been pastor of the Presbyterian church there, and wrote a once famous polemical work on The Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin (1738), which called forth celebrated treatises by Jonathan Edwards on Original Sin. Her mother, Susannah Cook, was an exceedingly clever woman who transmitted both her beauty and her talent to her daughter. Their friends included Dr. James Alderson and his daughter Amelia Opie, Henry Crabbe Robinson, the Gurneys and Sir James Mackintosh.
Sarah Taylor married in 1820 John Austin. They lived in Queen Square, Westminster, where Mrs Austin, whose tastes, unlike her husband's, were extremely sociable, gathered round her a large circle, Jeremy Bentham, James Mill and the Grotes being especially intimate. She travelled extensively, namely to Dresden and Weimar.
Austin never attempted any considerable original work, concerning herself chiefly with translations. She popularized German literature in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Her most important works are:
- The travels of a German prince in England (Lond. 1832), after Pückler's Briefe eines Verstorbenen
- Characteristics of Goethe (1833, 3 Vols.), translations of and commentary on Goethe's works
- Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia (1834) from the French of Victor Cousin
- Considerations on national education (1839)
- History of the Reformation in Germany and History of the Popes (1840), from the German of Leopold von Ranke
- Collection of fragments from the German prosewriters
- Sketches of Germany from 1760 to 1814 (1854), dealing with political and social circumstances during that period.
- Letters on girls' schools (1857)
- Friedrich Wilhelm Carove's The Story Without an End (1864)
After her husband's death in 1859 she edited his Lectures on Jurisprudence. She also edited the Memoirs of Sydney Smith (1855) and Lady Duff-Gordon's Letters from Egypt (1865). She died at Weybridge on the 8th of August 1867.
Austin's daughter Lucie, married Sir Alexander Duff-Gordon, and was herself a translator of German works.
See Three Generations of Englishwomen (1888), by her granddaghter, Mrs Janet Ross.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
