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Peter Taylor (writer)

From Wikipedia, in a visual modern way
Peter Taylor with Robert Lowell and Jean Stafford in front of The Presbytere at Jackson Square, New Orleans in 1941.
Peter Taylor with Robert Lowell and Jean Stafford in front of The Presbytere at Jackson Square, New Orleans in 1941.

Matthew Hillsman Taylor, Jr.[1] (January 8, 1917 – November 2, 1994), known professionally as Peter Taylor, was an American novelist, short story writer, and playwright.[2] Born and raised in Tennessee and St. Louis, Missouri, he wrote frequently about the urban South in his stories and novels.

Biography

Taylor was born in Trenton, Tennessee, to Matthew Hillsman "Red" Taylor, a prominent attorney who played football at Vanderbilt University in 1904 and '05, and Katherine Baird (Taylor) Taylor. His father was named after Matthew Hillsman, a long-time local Baptist pastor. His father's father, Colonel Robert Zachary Taylor, had fought for the Confederate Army as a private under Nathan Bedford Forrest. When working in 1908 as an attorney for the West Tennessee Land Company, which had bought interests in property at Reelfoot Lake, he was kidnapped with attorney Quentin Rankin in October and shot by night riders, who were harassing and intimidating people associated with the company. Initially reported as killed, Taylor escaped by swimming across the lake.[3] Rankin was shot and hanged the same night.[4]

His mother's father was Robert Love Taylor, a politician and writer from eastern Tennessee who served one term as a US Congressman, and three two-year terms as governor of Tennessee in the 19th century, and as United States Senator from Tennessee from 1907 until his death in 1912.[5]

During his early childhood, Taylor lived with his family in Nashville. The family moved to St. Louis in 1926 when Taylor's father became president of the General American Life Insurance Company. In St. Louis, Taylor attended the Rossman School and St. Louis Country Day School. In 1932, the family moved to Memphis, where his father established a law practice. Taylor graduated from Central High School in Memphis in 1935. He wrote his first published piece while there, an interview with actress Katharine Cornell.[6]

After a gap year in which he traveled to England, Taylor enrolled at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College) in 1936, studying under the critic Allen Tate. Tate encouraged Taylor to transfer to Vanderbilt University, which he later left to continue studying with the great American critic and poet John Crowe Ransom at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Poet Robert Lowell from Boston was also enrolled there and they became lifelong friends. Taylor also befriended Robert Penn Warren, Randall Jarrell, Katherine Anne Porter, Jean Stafford, James Thackara, Robie Macauley and other significant literary figures of the time.[7]

Considered to be one of the finest American short story writers, Taylor made his fictional milieu the urban South, with references to its history. His characters, usually middle or upper-class people, often are living in a time of change in the 20th century, and struggle to discover and define their roles in society.

His collection The Old Forest and Other Stories (1985) won the PEN/Faulkner Award. Taylor also wrote three novels, including A Summons to Memphis in 1986, for which he won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and In the Tennessee Country in 1994. Taylor taught literature and writing at Kenyon and at the University of Virginia.

He was married for fifty-one years to the poet Eleanor Ross Taylor and died in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1994. His papers[8] are held at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia.

He was a Charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Discover more about Biography related topics

Hillsman Taylor

Hillsman Taylor

Matthew Hillsman "Red" Taylor was an attorney and politician, serving as a state representative and Speaker of the House in Tennessee. He played college football at Vanderbilt University. He later became a prominent attorney in St. Louis, Missouri and Memphis, Tennessee. His children included Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor, who became a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

American football

American football

American football, also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with possession of the oval-shaped football, attempts to advance down the field by running with the ball or passing it, while the defense, the team without possession of the ball, aims to stop the offense's advance and to take control of the ball for themselves. The offense must advance at least ten yards in four downs or plays; if they fail, they turn over the football to the defense, but if they succeed, they are given a new set of four downs to continue the drive. Points are scored primarily by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone for a touchdown or kicking the ball through the opponent's goalposts for a field goal. The team with the most points at the end of a game wins.

Nathan Bedford Forrest

Nathan Bedford Forrest

Nathan Bedford Forrest was a prominent Confederate Army general during the American Civil War and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from 1867 to 1869. Before the war, Forrest amassed substantial wealth as a cotton plantation owner, horse, and cattle trader, real estate broker, and slave trader. In June 1861, he enlisted in the Confederate Army and became one of the few soldiers during the war to enlist as a private and be promoted to general without any prior military training. An expert cavalry leader, Forrest was given command of a corps and established new doctrines for mobile forces, earning the nickname "The Wizard of the Saddle". He used his cavalry troops as mounted infantry and often deployed artillery as the lead in battle, thus helping to "revolutionize cavalry tactics", although the Confederate high command is seen by some commentators to have underappreciated his talents. While scholars generally acknowledge Forrest's skills and acumen as a cavalry leader and military strategist, he is a controversial figure in U.S. history for his role in the massacre of several hundred U.S. Army soldiers at Fort Pillow, a majority of them black, coupled with his role following the war as a leader of the Klan.

Reelfoot Lake

Reelfoot Lake

Reelfoot Lake is a shallow natural lake located in the northwest portion of the U.S. state of Tennessee, in Lake and Obion Counties. Much of it is swamp-like, with bayou-like ditches connecting more open bodies of water called basins, the largest of which is called Blue Basin. Reelfoot Lake is noted for its bald cypress trees and its nesting pairs of bald eagles.

The Night Riders

The Night Riders

The Night Riders was the name given by the press to the militant, terrorist faction of tobacco farmers during a popular resistance to the monopolistic practices of the American Tobacco Company of James B. Duke. On September 24, 1904, the tobacco planters of western Kentucky and the neighboring counties of West Tennessee formed the Dark Fired Tobacco District, or Black Patch District Planters' Protective Association of Kentucky and Tennessee. It urged farmers to boycott the American Tobacco Company and refuse to sell at the ruinously low prices being offered in a quasi-monopoly market.

Robert Love Taylor

Robert Love Taylor

Robert Love "Bob" Taylor was an American politician, writer, and lecturer. A member of the Democratic Party, he served three terms as the 24th governor of Tennessee, from 1887 to 1891, and again from 1897 to 1899, and subsequently served as a United States senator from 1907 until his death. He also represented Tennessee's 1st district in the United States House of Representatives from 1879 to 1881, the last Democrat to hold the district's seat.

Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-most populous city in Tennessee, after Nashville.

Central High School (Memphis, Tennessee)

Central High School (Memphis, Tennessee)

Central High School is a public high school in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. Since it was founded in the early 1900s and is considered the first high school in Memphis; Central is often called "THE" High School. It is a part of the Shelby County Optional School system where it is recognized as a school specializing in college preparatory programs. The principal is Gregory McCullough. Central's mascot is the Warrior and the school colors are green and gold. For recognition as the successor to Memphis High School, the first high school in Memphis, Central High's football team, rather than having artwork denoting the "Warrior" mascot, simply has a capital "H", for THE High School

Katharine Cornell

Katharine Cornell

Katharine Cornell was an American stage actress, writer, theater owner and producer. She was born in Berlin to American parents and raised in Buffalo, New York.

Gap year

Gap year

A gap year, also known as a sabbatical year, is a period of time when students take a break from their studies, usually after completing high school or before beginning graduate school. During this time, students engage in a variety of educational and developmental activities, such as traveling, working, volunteering, or taking courses. Gap years are not limited to a year-long break and can range from several months to a few years.

Rhodes College

Rhodes College

Rhodes College is a private liberal arts college in Memphis, Tennessee. Historically affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA), it is a member of the Associated Colleges of the South and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Rhodes enrolls about 2,000 students, and its Collegiate Gothic campus sits on a 123-acre wooded site in Memphis' historic Midtown neighborhood.

Allen Tate

Allen Tate

John Orley Allen Tate, known professionally as Allen Tate, was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and poet laureate from 1943 to 1944.

Works

Short story collections

  • A Long Fourth and Other Stories, introduction by Robert Penn Warren, Harcourt, 1948.
  • The Widows of Thornton (includes a play), Harcourt, 1954, reprinted, Louisiana State University Press, 1994.
  • Happy Families Are All Alike: A Collection of Stories, Astor Honor, 1959.
  • Miss Leonora When Last Seen and Fifteen Other Stories, Astor Honor, 1963.
  • The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor, Farrar, Straus, 1969.[9]
  • In the Miro District and Other Stories, Knopf, 1977.
  • The Old Forest and Other Stories, Dial, 1985.
  • The Oracle at Stoneleigh Court, Knopf, 1993.

Novels

  • A Woman of Means, Harcourt, 1950; reprinted, Frederic C. Beil, 1983, Picador, 1996.
  • A Summons to Memphis, Knopf, 1986.
  • In the Tennessee Country, Knopf, 1994.

Plays

  • Tennessee Day in St. Louis, Random House, 1959.
  • A Stand in the Mountains, published in Kenyon Review, 1965; reprinted, Frederic C. Beil, 1985.
  • Presences: Seven Dramatic Pieces (contains "Two Images," "A Father and a Son," "Missing Person," "The Whistler," "Arson," "A Voice through the Door," and "The Sweethearts"), Houghton, 1973.

Other

(Editor with Robert Lowell and Robert Penn Warren) Randall Jarrell, 1914-1965, Farrar, Straus, 1967.

Peter Taylor Reading and Commenting on His Fiction (audio tape), Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature, 1987.

Awards and honors

Source: "Peter Taylor (writer)", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2022, December 15th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Taylor_(writer).

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Further Reading

Robert Penn Warren

Richard Ford

E. L. Doctorow

John Crowe Ransom

James Lawson (activist)

William H. Gass

Louis Auchincloss

Randall Jarrell

Malcolm R. Patterson

Luke Lea (American politician, born 1879)

William Alexander Percy

Andrew Nelson Lytle

Robie Macauley

Mary Hood

Eleanor Ross Taylor

1905 College Football All-Southern Team

Hubert Horton McAlexander
References
  1. ^ McAlexander, Hubert H. (September 30, 2001). "Peter Taylor". New York Times. Retrieved October 17, 2017.
  2. ^ Gussow, Mel (4 November 1994). "Peter Taylor, Short-Story Master, Dies at 77". New York Times.
  3. ^ "Lawyer Escapes Mob". The Bee. Earlington, Kentucky. October 22, 1908. p. 1. Retrieved February 8, 2012.
  4. ^ "Night Riders Slay Lawyers". New York Times. October 21, 1908. Retrieved December 16, 2011.
  5. ^ Alexander, Hubert Horton (2001). Peter Taylor: A Writer's Life. Louisiana State University Press. pp. 1–6. ISBN 0-8071-2973-9.
  6. ^ McAlexander, Hubert Horton (January 29, 2004). Peter Taylor: A Writer's Life. LSU Press. ISBN 9780807129739 – via Google Books.
  7. ^ Hubert Horton McAlexander (April 2004). Peter Taylor: A Writer's Life. LSU Press. pp. xiv, 50. ISBN 978-0-8071-2973-9. Retrieved 15 January 2012.
  8. ^ "A Guide to the Papers of Peter Hillsman Taylor, 1948-1977: #10265,-b". ead.lib.virginia.edu.
  9. ^ "Second Reading: Jonathan Yardley reviews 'The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor'". The Washington Post. 1 January 2010.
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