Elizabeth Taylor

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ET published, during the mid to late twentieth century, twelve novels, four collections of short stories, and a handful of essays. As a writer of high calibre whose favourite effects are built on understatement and irony, she has been persistently undervalued by commentators.
  • BirthName: Dorothy Betty Coles
    She was not christened Elizabeth, but Betty. She never used Dorothy, but was Betty to everybody until she got married. Then she chose to be called Elizabeth (a name which she had first used as an amateur actor).
    Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books, 2009.
    1-2, 65, 53

  • Self-constructed: Elizabeth
  • Married: Taylor

Milestones

3 July 1912

Elizabeth Coles (later ET ) was born at 71 Wantage Road, Reading, in Berkshire, a town where both of her parents' families lived. She was the elder of two children; the other was a younger brother.
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books, 2009.
1, 7
Leclercq, Florence. Elizabeth Taylor. Twayne, 1985.
2

By June 1957

ET published Angel, a novel about the career of a best-selling novelist, a fantasy-dweller in flight from actuality.
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton, 1984.
270

19 November 1975

ET died of cancer at her home in Penn; her husband outlived her, and married again.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
139
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books, 2009.
391

By September 1976

The year following ET 's death, her husband posthumously published Blaming. She had known that this would be her last novel.
Leclercq, Florence. Elizabeth Taylor. Twayne, 1985.
108n6
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books, 2009.
380

Biography

Birth and Family

3 July 1912

Elizabeth Coles (later ET ) was born at 71 Wantage Road, Reading, in Berkshire, a town where both of her parents' families lived. She was the elder of two children; the other was a younger brother.
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books, 2009.
1, 7
Leclercq, Florence. Elizabeth Taylor. Twayne, 1985.
2

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