Lillian “Lillie” Marie Gary was born near Baltimore in 1865. Her father, James Albert Gary, was a textile manufacturer who later became President William McKinley’s Postmaster General. Lillian Gary was educated at home and in small private schools, receiving instruction in poetry, writing, arithmetic, French, music, and dance. As a 16-year-old, she accompanied her parents to Europe, where she returned many times as an adult. In her travel diary, Lillian described her parents as encouraging in their children “our love of the fine and beautiful before we knew what was fine and beautiful.”

In 1900, Lillian married Robert Coleman Taylor in New York City. Taylor was an alumnus of the University of Virginia Law School (1886) and served as Assistant District Attorney of New York County from 1902 to 1934. President William McKinley, a close family friend, attended the wedding.

Mrs. Taylor was an enthusiastic bibliophile. She collected American fiction for 25 years and corresponded with book dealers, bibliographers, librarians, and numerous authors, including Margaret Mitchell and Lew Wallace.

The Taylors gave Mrs. Taylor’s collection to the University of Virginia in 1945, inspired by their long relationship with the University. Lillian Gary Taylor died in 1961 at the age of 96. In this exhibition, we celebrate her love of books and her gift to the University of Virginia Library’s Special Collections.

Compiled from Mrs. Taylor’s collecting diaries and her biography written by Aurelia Bolton, a relative living in Baltimore and Florida.