Francis Haywood


Francis Haywood was a Liverpool merchant and translator, the first person to translate Kant's Critique of Pure Reason into English.

Life

Born in Liverpool, Haywood lived there for most of his life. In 1828 he translated a reply by the theological rationalist Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider to Hugh James Rose's essay on the state of Protestantism in Germany. In an 1829 Foreign Review article Haywood called for an English translation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Arthur Schopenhauer wrote to him on the matter, but was offended when Haywood suggested they should collaborate on a translation. Haywood's translation of the first Critique appeared anonymously in 1838.
Haywood died on 29 May 1858 at Feckenham in Worcestershire, and was buried in the churchyard of St John the Baptist in Feckenham.
Haywood's daughter Lucy Franklin published an anonymous memoir of her father in the Cornhill Magazine. There are some papers relating to him at Duke University library.

Works