Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Taylor
-
Standard Name: Taylor, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Coles
Married Name: Elizabeth Taylor
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.
She went back to writing stories because the shorter form seemed more compatible with the life she was leading while in charge of a large family establishment in the country. She had also lost confidence...
Family and Intimate relationships
Barbara Pym
Rupert Gleadow
cared about BP
a great deal, but their romance was an experience which she chose to downplay in her memory and writing. Her long, unsuccessful pursuit of Henry Harvey
, who both attracted...
Authors BP
, Mary Renault
, and Elizabeth Taylor
attended a party in Athens given by Pym's longtime friend the novelist and critic Robert Liddell
.
Pym, Barbara. A Very Private Eye. Editors Holt, Hazel and Hilary Pym, Macmillan, 1984.
227
Friends, Associates
Barbara Pym
BP
wrote steadily throughout her life, regardless of changes in occupation. One of the benefits of her first publication, Some Tame Gazelle, in 1950 was the introduction of various authors into her personal and...
Liddell was to remain one of ICB
's close friends. She maintained a benevolent, almost aunt-like relationship with him, and although resident abroad he was an important source of support after Jourdain's death. He later...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ethel M. Dell
Taylor
's romantic-novelist heroine numbers EMD
among her models, and quotes this passage with enthusiasm.
Intertextuality and Influence
Zoë Fairbairns
Most of the novel is spent uncovering truths about these two major characters: Heather, who seeks knowledge about her birth father (and enters briefly into rivalry with her mother, Julia, over the same man), and...
Intertextuality and Influence
Dorothy Whipple
DW
was an unacknowledged favourite of Ivy Compton-Burnett
and evidently of Elizabeth Taylor
too, since Taylor borrowed for her novel Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont from the opening of a story among Whipple's papers, which...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sarah Waters
SW
puts in puts in something like a regular work day when writing, but keeps going to all hours when re-writing. Despite her success, she still finds the process largely torture. And yet [s]tarting...
Literary responses
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Printed praise came from Stevie Smith
and Raymond Mortimer
among others. Elizabeth Taylor
noticed how the reviewers' imagery harped on weapons: rapiers, axes, stilettos, knives and grenades.
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton, 1984.
213
Literary responses
Elizabeth Jenkins
The novel was criticised by some for its exclusively upper-middle-class reach—a view which was energetically countered by Rose Macaulay
on a radio programme.
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson, 2004.
107
The Times Literary Supplement welcomed with joy a novel where the...
Literary responses
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Elizabeth Taylor
detailed the interest that attended this book's appearance. Published on a Monday, it was broadcast as a radio play on Wednesday, discussed on radio on Thursday by Daniel George
(who called the author...
Literary responses
Olivia Manning
This book evoked a double-edged response from Ivy Compton-Burnett
who, writing to Elizabeth Taylor
, said: It really is full of very good descriptions. Quite excellent descriptions. I don't know if you care for descriptions...
Timeline
1 January 1916: The British edition of Vogue (an American...
Building item
1 January 1916
The British edition of Vogue (an American fashion magazine) began publishing from Condé Nast
in Hanover Square, London.
White, Cynthia L. Women’s Magazines 1693-1968. Michael Joseph, 1970.
90
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Spawls, Alice. “Does one flare or cling?”. London Review of Books, Vol.
38
, No. 9, 5 May 2016, pp. 40-2.
21 February 1924: The first issue appeared of the New Yorker...
Writing climate item
21 February 1924
The first issue appeared of the New Yorker magazine (still going strong in the twenty-first century).
Borne Back Daily. 2001, http://borneback.com/ .
21 February 2011
Kindley, Evan. “Ismism”. London Review of Books, Vol.
36
, No. 2, 23 Jan. 2014, pp. 33-5.
33
26 November 1945: The film Brief Encounter, starring actress...
Building item
26 November 1945
The film Brief Encounter, starring actress Celia Johnson
, directed by David Lean
, based on a play by Noël Coward
, had its English premiere.
Palmer, Alan, and Veronica Palmer. The Chronology of British History. Century, 1992.
395
The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). http://www.imdb.com.
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books, 2009.
xviii, 230-2
8 May 2008: Virago Press marked thirty years of Virago...