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Edward Taylor was born in Leicestershire, England and, in fact, all of New England’s first-generation writers, he was a brilliant poet and minister. He was the son of an independent yeoman farmer who owned his own land. Basically, Taylor was a teacher. He sailed to New England in 1668 rather than takes an oath of loyalty to the Church of England. In 1671, he studied at Harvard Collage. Being a self less and pious man. Taylor acted as a missionary to the settlers. He accepted his lifelong job as a minister in the frontier town of Westfield, Massachusetts, a hundred and sixty kilometers into the thickly forested interior. He was the best-educated man in the area, and put his knowledge to the best use, working as the town minister, doctor, and civic leader. Being the close friend of Increase Mather, Cotton Mather and he was Samuel Sewell and was rather conservative in the matter of the church policy. His modesty never allowed him to publish his poetry which was later discovered in a 1930.
No doubt, Taylor would have seen his work's discovery as divine providence today's reader should be grateful to have his poems, the finest example of seventeenth century poetry in the North American. He wrote a variety of verses - funeral religious elegies, lyrics, a mediaeval debate, and a 500 page Material History of Christianity. His best work according to modern critic's are the series of short preparatory meditations of his religion. Solely Taylor represented the Puritan faith. He was challenged by the enemies within and without. There were his enemies inside the community-settlers and the Native Americans. The enemy without is mainly the Native American, as in an account of Rowlandson. Now, he is known as the pre-eminent poet of early the New England but his poetry was not known in own day. Thomas H. Johnson edited his poems under the title Poetical Works (1939). His devotional Meditations explore the imagery of a biblical text.