Handley-Taylor, Geoffrey 1920–2005

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born April 25, 1920, in Horsforth, Yorkshire, England; died May 27, 2005. Bibliographer, editor, lecturer, and author. Handley-Taylor was a literary scholar who was a noted editor and compiler of bibliographies and other literary resources. After serving in the Eighth Battalion and the British War Office during World War II, he became a lecturer, giving talks about literary topics and the ballet. In 1961, he joined the staff of the Dictionary of International Biography Company in London as a director and honorary general manager. Two years later, he founded Geoffrey Handley-Taylor, Ltd. His early publications include Magenta Moments (1946) and Mona Inglesby: Ballerina and Choreographer (1947), after which he mostly focused on editing and compiling literary resources such as A Selected Bibliography of Literature relating to Nursery Rhyme Reform (1953) and Selected Letters of Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain, 1920–1935 (1960). He also wrote the bibliography John Masefield, O.M., the Queen's Poet Laureate (1959) and the satirical 1980 work Pogg. In addition to these endeavors, Handle-Taylor was an active participant in a number of literary organizations; for example, he chaired the British Poetry-Drama Guild from 1948 to 1952, was president of the St. Paul's Literary Society from 1966 to 1968, and founded the Winifred Holtby Memorial Collection.

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PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), June 13, 2005, p. 50.