Elizabeth Taylor (novelist)
Encyclopedia
Elizabeth Taylor was a British novelist and short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

.

Life and writings

The daughter of Oliver Coles, an insurance inspector, and his wife, Elsie May Fewtrell, Elizabeth Coles was educated at The Abbey School
The Abbey School
The Abbey School is an independent selective day school for girls, in Reading, Berkshire, England. The school has Church of England traditions, although it accepts girls of all faiths...

 in Reading and then worked as a governess, tutor, and librarian. She married John William Kendall Taylor, owner of a confectionery company, in 1936. They lived in Penn
Penn, Buckinghamshire
Penn is a village and civil parish in Chiltern district in Buckinghamshire, England, about north-west of Beaconsfield and east of High Wycombe...

, Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....

, for almost all their married life. She was briefly a member of the Communist Party, then a lifelong Labour Party supporter.

Taylor's first novel, At Mrs. Lippincote's, was published in 1945 and was followed by eleven more. Her short stories were published in magazines and collected in four volumes. She also wrote a children's book. The British critic Philip Hensher
Philip Hensher
Philip Michael Hensher FRSL is an English novelist, critic and journalist.Hensher was born in South London, although he spent the majority of his childhood and adolescence in Sheffield, attending Tapton School. He did his undergraduate degree at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford before attending...

 called The Soul of Kindness a novel "so expert that it seems effortless. As it progresses, it seems as if the cast are so fully rounded that all the novelist had to do was place them, successively, in one setting after another and observe how they reacted to each other.... The plot... never feels as if it were organised in advance; it feels as if it arises from her characters' mutual responses."

Taylor's work is mainly concerned with the nuances of everyday life and situations, which she writes about with dexterity. Her shrewd but affectionate portrayals of middle class and upper middle class English life won her an audience of discriminating readers, as well as loyal friends in the world of letters. She was a friend of the novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett, DBE was an English novelist, published as I. Compton-Burnett. She was awarded the 1955 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her novel Mother and Son.-Life:...

 and of the novelist and critic Robert Liddell
Robert Liddell
Robert Liddell was an English literary critic, biographer, novelist, travel writer and poet. He was born in Tunbridge Wells, England, and educated at Haileybury School and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. During the years 1933 to 1938 he was employed at the Bodleian Library as an assistant in...

. Her long correspondence with the latter forms the subject of one of her short stories, "The Letter Writers" (published in The Blush, 1951), but the letters were unfortunately destroyed, in line with her general policy of keeping her private life private. A horror of publicity is the subject of another celebrated short story, "Sisters", written in 1969.

Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler is an American novelist.Tyler, the eldest of four children, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her father was a chemist and her mother a social worker. Her early childhood was spent in a succession of Quaker communities in the mountains of North Carolina and in Raleigh...

 once compared Taylor to Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...

, Barbara Pym
Barbara Pym
Barbara Mary Crampton Pym was an English novelist. In 1977 her career was revived when two prominent writers, Lord David Cecil and Philip Larkin, nominated her as the most underrated writer of the century...

 and Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen, CBE was an Irish novelist and short story writer.-Life:Elizabeth Bowen was born on 7 June 1899 at 15 Herbert Place in Dublin, Ireland and was baptized in the nearby St Stephen's Church on Upper Mount Street...

 -- "soul sisters all," in Tyler's words.

Elizabeth Taylor was also a close friend of Elizabeth Jane Howard
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Elizabeth Jane Howard, CBE is an English novelist. She was previously an actress and a model.In 1951 she won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for her first novel, The Beautiful Visit...

, who was asked by Elizabeth Taylor's widower to write a biography following Elizabeth Taylor's death. Elizabeth Jane Howard refused due to what she felt was a lack of incident in Elizabeth Taylor's life. See Slipstream, Elizabeth Jane Howard's memoir, for more details on their friendship. Taylor's editor at the UK publisher Chatto & Windus
Chatto and Windus
Chatto & Windus has been, since 1987, an imprint of Random House, publishers. It was originally an important publisher of books in London, founded in the Victorian era....

 was the poet D. J. Enright
D. J. Enright
Dennis Joseph Enright was a British academic, poet, novelist and critic, and general man of letters.-Life:He was born in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, and educated at Leamington College and Downing College, Cambridge...

.

Elizabeth Taylor died of cancer in 1975, at the age of 63.

In the 21st century a new interest in her work was kindled by film-makers. French director François Ozon
François Ozon
François Ozon is a French film director and screenwriter and whose films are usually characterized by sharp satirical wit and a freewheeling view on human sexuality....

 made a 2007 film of The Real Life of Angel Deverell entitled Angel
Angel (2007 film)
Angel, also known as the Real Life of Angel Deverell, is a 2007 British film based on novel of the same name by Elizabeth Taylor, about the life of a fiery and passionate young writer. The protagonist was portrayed by Romola Garai, director François Ozon's first and only choice for the role...

, with Romola Garai
Romola Garai
Romola Sadie Garai is an English actress. She is known for appearing in the movies Amazing Grace, Atonement, and Glorious 39, and for appearing in the BBC adaptation of Emma.-Early life:...

. US director Dan Ireland made a screen adaptation of Taylor's Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is a 2005 comedy-drama film made by Claremont Films and distributed by Picture Entertainment Corporation. It was directed by Dan Ireland and produced by Lee Caplin, Carl Colpaert and Zachary Matz from a screenplay by Ruth Sacks, based on the novel by Elizabeth...

(2005), with Joan Plowright
Joan Plowright
Joan Ann Plowright, Baroness Olivier, DBE , better known as Dame Joan Plowright, is an English actress, whose career has spanned over sixty years. Throughout her career she has won two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award and has been nominated for an Academy Award, an Emmy, and two BAFTA Awards...

 in the title role.

Novels

  • At Mrs. Lippincote's
    At Mrs. Lippincote's
    At Mrs. Lippincote's is a 1945 novel by Elizabeth Taylor.Julia and her husband, Roddy, along with their young son, Oliver, and Roddy's cousin, Eleanor, are temporarily living at Mrs. Lippincote's, a house filled with old mahogany furniture and other reminders of earlier wealth...

    (1945)
  • Palladian (1946) shows most clearly the influence of Jane Austen.
  • A View of the Harbour (1947)
  • A Wreath of Roses (1949)
  • A Game of Hide and Seek
    A Game of Hide and Seek
    A Game of Hide and Seek is a 1951 novel by Elizabeth Taylor.It is a very human, ordinary and yet very extraordinary story, set in England between WWI and WWII and focused mainly upon Harriet Claridge and Vesey Macmillan. The relationship between these two and the effect it has upon those around...

    (1951)
  • The Sleeping Beauty (1953)
  • The Real Life of Angel Deverell
    Angel (novel)
    Angel is a novel by the English novelist Elizabeth Taylor first published in 1957.It tells the life story of Angelica Deverell from her adolescence and first attempts at writing, through the course of her career as a successful writer of sensational romances, into her decline, old age and death...

    (published as Angel,1957)
  • In a Summer Season (1961) is her most sex-infused work, telling the story of a rich woman who marries a man ten years her junior.
  • The Soul of Kindness (1964)
  • The Wedding Group (1968)
  • Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (1971). The author's actress namesake is probably alluded to when it is announced that "the blousy Mrs Burton" is coming to stay at the hotel.
  • Blaming
    Blaming (novel)
    Blaming is the last novel by Elizabeth Taylor. It was first published , posthumously, in 1976.Amy's husband dies while she is on a cruise, and she is befriended by Martha, an awkward young American writer. "The novel describes Amy's reluctant obligation to this fragile person and her internal...

    (1976), posthumous.

Short story collections

  • Hester Lilly (1954)
  • The Blush and Other Stories (1958)
  • A Dedicated Man and Other Stories (1965)
  • The Devastating Boys (1972). Includes "Sisters".
  • Dangerous Calm (1995). A selection of her stories.

Quotation

  • "The whole point is that writing has a pattern and life hasn't. Life is so untidy. Art is so short and life so long. It is not possible to have perfection in life but it is possible to have perfection in a novel."

External links

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