Taylor, Peter (1917-1994), an American author, became known for his short stories and novels about upper-class society in Tennessee. He won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel A Summons to Memphis (1986).
Taylor typically wrote about the lives and culture of Southerners caught in conflicts between the rural “Old South” and the industrialized, urban “New South.” Critics have praised him for his restrained and realistic style, his subtle humor, and his complex characterizations.
Taylor gained his greatest recognition for his short stories, beginning with the collection A Long Fourth (1948). His later collections include The Widows of Thornton (1954), Happy Families Are All Alike (1959), Miss Leonora When Last Seen (1963), In the Miro District (1977), The Old Forest (1985), and The Oracle at Stoneleigh (1993). In addition to A Summons to Memphis, Taylor wrote two other novels, A Woman of Means (1950) and In the Tennessee Country (1994). He also wrote several plays.
Peter Hillsman Taylor was born in Trenton, Tennessee. In 1936 and 1937, Taylor attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where he came into contact with such major Southern writers as Allan Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and John Crowe Ransom. He also attended Southwestern College in Memphis and received a B.A. degree from Kenyon College in 1940. Taylor taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro from 1946 to 1967 and at the University of Virginia from 1967 to 1994.
