ELIZABETH TAYLOR (1912–1975) was born into a middle-class
family in Berkshire, England. She held a variety of positions,
including librarian and governess, before marrying a businessman in
1936. Nine years later, her first novel, At Mrs. Lippincote’s,
appeared. She would go on to publish
eleven more novels, including Angel (available as an NYRB Classic),
four collections of short stories (many of which originally
appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and other magazines), and a
children’s book, Mossy Trotter, while living with her husband and
two children in Buckinghamshire. Long championed by Ivy
Compton-Burnett, Barbara Pym, Robert Liddell, Kingsley Amis, and
Elizabeth Jane Howard, Taylor’s novels and stories have been the
basis for a number of films, including Mrs. Palfrey at the
Claremont (2005), starring Joan Plowright, and François Ozon’s
Angel (2007). In 2013 NYRB Classics will publish a new selection of
Taylor’s short stories.
CALEB CRAIN is the author of American Sympathy, a study of
friendship between men in early American literature. He has written
for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and n+1. His
novel Necessary Errors will be published in 2013.
“Taylor has the genius of making her characters understood,
sometimes with an almost frightening clarity, perhaps because she
is compassionate as well as relentless in her delineation of
them.”
—The New York Times
“Funny, savage and full of loneliness and suppressed emotion.”
—Rachel Cooke, The Observer
“It is time that justice was done to Elizabeth Taylor. . . . All
her writings could be described as coming into the category of
comedy. Comedy is the best vehicle for truths that are too fierce
to be borne.”
—Anita Brookner
“Elizabeth Taylor is finally being recognized as an important
British author: an author of great subtlety, great compassion and
great depth. As a reader, I have found huge pleasure in returning
to Taylor’s novels and short stories many times over. As a writer
I’ve returned to her too—in awe of her achievements, and trying to
work out how she does it.” —Sarah Waters
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