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 (available as an NYRB Classic), 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). In 2013 NYRB Classics will publish a new selection of Taylor's short stories.
CALEB CRAIN is the author of
American Sympathy, a study of friendship between men in early American literature. He has written for
The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and
n+1. His novel
Necessary Errors will be published in 2013.