Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. A periodicals man and miscellaneous writer, Taylor began writing plays in 1844. His repertoire was versatile and ranged through melodrama, historical and domestic drama. He was interested in realist costume drama, making sure that his historical plays offered an accurate visual representation of their period. But he also wrote farces based on fairy stories and folk tales - popular in the early Victorian period. His comedy relied heavily on puns and jokes (Our American Cousin), much in the Punch vein. His collaborations with writers and playwrights like Mark Lemon, Charles Reade, Albert Smith, etc., Punch writers and editors themselves, suggests his style of humour was developed in the comic journals of the time. Indeed in the 1870s, he became the editor of Punch. He also adapted fiction like Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and A Tale of Two Cities (1860). But he favoured historical plays like Jeanne D'Arc and Anne Boleyn, and historico-industrial plays like Arkwright's Wife. His last play was written in 1878.

His plays mingle humour and pathos, using comic characters like Mrs Willoughby and Sam, Emily and Green (the St. Evremonds) in The Ticket-of-Leave Man. His drama presents a great sense of stagecraft, and an appreciation of the changing nature of the theatre. The combination of comedy, melodrama (passion, sensation, violence), and realism suggests also the strong influence of Dickens' fiction. The Ticket-of-Leave Man is clearly influenced by the success of the 'prison-novel' Great Expectations.

Our American Cousin is famed for being the play during which Lincoln was assassinated in Washington in 1865.