Who Was Geraldine Taylor? Mrs. Howard Taylor, Missionary Biographer

Biography Missions Christian Life

Geraldine Taylor was an English missionary to China and one of the best-loved Christian biographers of the twentieth century. She was born Mary Geraldine Guinness in 1862, the daughter of the evangelist Henry Grattan Guinness, and sailed for China with the China Inland Mission in 1888. In 1894 she married Howard Taylor, a missionary doctor and the son of Hudson Taylor, the mission's founder. Most of her books carry the name "Mrs. Howard Taylor." She wrote more than twenty of them, and the best known are the lives of Pastor Hsi, Hudson Taylor and William Borden of Yale. She died in 1949.

Here's a fuller look at her life, what she wrote, and which of her books to start with.

A home full of missions

Geraldine grew up in a family that lived for the spread of the gospel. Her father, Henry Grattan Guinness, was an Irish-born preacher who drew large crowds in the revivals of the 1850s and later trained hundreds of young missionaries at the college he and his wife Fanny ran in East London. Fanny Guinness was a writer and speaker too. Hudson Taylor was a friend of the family, and China was talked about at their table long before Geraldine went there.

As a young woman she worked among the poor of London's East End, where she taught a Bible class for girls who worked in the factories. It was good training. All her life she wrote for ordinary people, not scholars, and she wrote as someone who had sat with them.

China and the China Inland Mission

She joined the China Inland Mission in her twenties and left London in January 1888. After language study she worked in the interior, in the province of Henan. Her letters home were printed as In the Far East, her first book, and they showed what she'd go on to do for the rest of her life: tell the story of the work in China so that Christians at home would pray and give and go.

In 1894 she married Dr. Howard Taylor. From then on the two of them traveled together, often for months at a time, visiting mission stations, speaking at meetings in Britain, America and Australia, and gathering the material for her books. Her husband helped her with several of them, and the two are named together on the Hudson Taylor volumes.

The books that made her known

Her first great subject was a Chinese believer. Hsi Shengmo was a proud Confucian scholar of Shansi, ruined by opium, who was won to Christ through the missionary David Hill and became a pastor and leader of the North China church. Geraldine Taylor drew on the short account of his life that Hsi wrote at the missionaries' request, and on what she learned from those who worked with him. Pastor Hsi has never gone out of print. It's a story of a changed life, and she tells it plainly:

Thus it was impossible for Hsi to be silent about his Saviour. As well might the sun keep from shining, or the heart that loves and is loved, from rejoicing.
Pastor Hsi of North China, The Great Change

Her largest work was the authorized life of her father-in-law, Hudson Taylor, written with her husband in two volumes. The first, Hudson Taylor in Early Years: The Growth of a Soul (1911), follows him from a Methodist home in Barnsley to his conversion, his years of preparation in Hull and London, and his first years in China. The second, The Growth of a Work of God, tells the story of the mission. Later she and Howard condensed the heart of it into Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret, a short book that many Christians have read more than once.

She didn't write the life as a monument. She wrote it to show how God shapes a person. Summing up his first trip into the unreached interior, which ended with him roughly handled by the people he'd come to help, she wrote:

Love first, then suffering, then a deeper love — thus only can God's work be done.
Hudson Taylor in Early Years, Not Where Christ Was Named

Her third famous book is Borden of Yale '09, the life of William Whiting Borden, a young American heir who gave himself and his fortune to missions and died in Cairo in 1913, at twenty-five, while preparing to work among the Muslims of north-west China. Of his last days in the hospital she wrote:

No reserve, no retreat, no regrets had any place in Borden's consecration to God.
Borden of Yale '09, The Finished Course

That line, shortened to "no reserves, no retreats, no regrets," has been repeated in sermons ever since, usually as Borden's own words. In the book it's Geraldine Taylor's summary of his life.

Travels in the north-west

The Taylors kept traveling well into old age. Around 1920 they went with China Inland Mission workers through Kansu, in China's far north-west, where Tibetans, Muslims, Chinese and mountain tribes lived side by side and very few had heard the gospel. They were at Lanchow when the great earthquake of December 1920 struck. The Call of China's Great North-west is her account of that trip: the mission stations, the earthquake and the relief work, a Tibetan monastery festival, a meeting with a "Living Buddha," and an appeal for workers. She believed the most important thing a missionary brings is love:

First, last, and most of all it is love that wins, love that interprets rightly the Gospel message and makes real to darkened hearts the love of God in Christ.
The Call of China's Great North-west, Far-off Liangchow

Her later books

She kept writing into her seventies. Guinness of Honan told the life of her brother Whitfield, a missionary doctor. The Triumph of John and Betty Stam told of the young missionary couple killed in China in 1934. Behind the Ranges told the story of James Fraser, the missionary to the Lisu people of south-west China. Howard Taylor died in 1946, and Geraldine died in England in 1949, at Tunbridge Wells.

Why she's still read

Geraldine Taylor's books are still read for the same reason they sold in her lifetime. She tells true stories well. She lets her subjects speak through their letters and diaries, she knows the places she describes, and she never forgets that the real subject of every book is what God does through a surrendered life. Readers come away wanting to pray more and trust God more.

She also had a gift for drawing the lesson out of a story in one sentence. Writing about Borden's choice to give himself fully to Christ, she put it this way:

It is the surrendered life that counts, for through it God can work.
Borden of Yale '09, Coming Home

Where to start

TheWay Library has four of her books, all free to read. If you're new to her, start with Pastor Hsi of North China, her best-known story and a powerful account of conversion and Christian leadership. Then read Hudson Taylor in Early Years, which shows how a young man learned to trust God before he ever left England. Students and young adults should read Borden of Yale '09. If you love missions history, finish with The Call of China's Great North-west.

Our guide to Geraldine Taylor's books describes each one, and our collection of Geraldine Taylor quotes gathers her best lines. For the man at the center of her largest work, see who was Hudson Taylor and our summary of Hudson Taylor in Early Years. You'll find all her books on the Mrs. Howard Taylor author page, and more like them in our list of the best missionary biographies.