Elizabeth Taylor
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 and
A Game of Hide and Seek (both available as NYRB Classics), 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).