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
A Game of Hide and Seek (available as an NYRB Classic), four
collections of short stories, and a children’s book, Mossy Trotter.
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).
Hilary Mantel is an English novelist, short-story writer, and
critic. Her novel Wolf Hall won the Man Booker Prize in 2009.
“With its monstrous romantic-novelist heroine Angelica Deverell,
it’s a study of extravagant self-deception that’s both achingly
funny and heart-wrenchingly sad.” —The Millions
“Always intelligent, often subversive and never dull, Elizabeth
Taylor is the thinking person’s dangerous housewife. Her
sophisticated prose combines elegance, icy wit and freshness in a
stimulating cocktail—the perfect toast to the quiet horror of
domestic life.” —Valerie Martin
“Elizabeth Taylor is finally being recognised 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
“Her stories remain with one, indelibly, as though they had been
some turning
point in one’s own experience.” —Elizabeth Bowen
“One of the most underrated novelists of the twentieth century,
Elizabeth Taylor writes with a wonderful precision and grace. Her
world is totally absorbing.” —Antonia Fraser
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