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Hester Lilly
The title story shows a headmaster’s elegant wife suffering torments of jealousy when his gawky young cousin comes to live with them. Why is it that her sophistication seems unable to compete with Hester’s naivety? Elsewhere we see the mute agonies of a long marriage; the emotional deserts lurking in the English countryside; and old ruffian’s sense of suffocation in a genteel community for the blind; or the freshness and oddity of children’s perceptions. In this, her first collection of short stories, Elizabeth Taylor charts the territory she so triumphantly claimed as her own.
Contents:
Hester Lilly
‘Taking Mother Out’
Spry Old Character
First Death of Her Life
Gravement Endommagé
The Idea of Age
Nods & Becks & Wreathèd Smiles
A Sad Garden
Shadows of the World
The Light of Day
Swan-moving
A Red-letter Day
The Beginning of a Story
Oasis of Gaiety
Plenty Good Fiesta
Simone
I Live in a World of Make-believe
Contents:
Hester Lilly
‘Taking Mother Out’
Spry Old Character
First Death of Her Life
Gravement Endommagé
The Idea of Age
Nods & Becks & Wreathèd Smiles
A Sad Garden
Shadows of the World
The Light of Day
Swan-moving
A Red-letter Day
The Beginning of a Story
Oasis of Gaiety
Plenty Good Fiesta
Simone
I Live in a World of Make-believe
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1954
2 people are currently reading
88 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Taylor
70 books520 followersElizabeth Taylor (née Coles) was a popular English novelist and short story writer. Elizabeth Coles was born in Reading, Berkshire in 1912. She was educated at The Abbey School, Reading, and worked as a governess, as a tutor and as a librarian.
In 1936, she married John William Kendall Taylor, a businessman. She lived in Penn, Buckinghamshire, for almost all her married life.
Her first novel, At Mrs. Lippincote's, was published in 1945 and was followed by eleven more. Her short stories were published in various magazines and collected in four volumes. She also wrote a children's book.
Taylor's work is mainly concerned with the nuances of "everyday" life and situations, which she writes about with dexterity. Her shrewd but affectionate portrayals of middle class and upper middle class English life won her an audience of discriminating readers, as well as loyal friends in the world of letters.
She was a friend of the novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett and of the novelist and critic Robert Liddell.
Elizabeth Taylor died at age 63 of cancer.
Anne Tyler once compared Taylor to Jane Austen, Barbara Pym and Elizabeth Bowen -- "soul sisters all," in Tyler's words . In recent years new interest has been kindled by movie makers in her work. French director Francois Ozon, has made "The Real Life of Angel Deverell" which will be released in early 2005. American director Dan Ireland's screen adaptation of Taylor's "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont" came out in this country first in 2006 and has made close to $1 million. A British distributor picked it up at Cannes, and the movie was released in England in 2009.
In 1936, she married John William Kendall Taylor, a businessman. She lived in Penn, Buckinghamshire, for almost all her married life.
Her first novel, At Mrs. Lippincote's, was published in 1945 and was followed by eleven more. Her short stories were published in various magazines and collected in four volumes. She also wrote a children's book.
Taylor's work is mainly concerned with the nuances of "everyday" life and situations, which she writes about with dexterity. Her shrewd but affectionate portrayals of middle class and upper middle class English life won her an audience of discriminating readers, as well as loyal friends in the world of letters.
She was a friend of the novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett and of the novelist and critic Robert Liddell.
Elizabeth Taylor died at age 63 of cancer.
Anne Tyler once compared Taylor to Jane Austen, Barbara Pym and Elizabeth Bowen -- "soul sisters all," in Tyler's words . In recent years new interest has been kindled by movie makers in her work. French director Francois Ozon, has made "The Real Life of Angel Deverell" which will be released in early 2005. American director Dan Ireland's screen adaptation of Taylor's "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont" came out in this country first in 2006 and has made close to $1 million. A British distributor picked it up at Cannes, and the movie was released in England in 2009.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 1, 2024
I really enjoyed this: a psychological realist who's not cruel, a satirist who never goes for the obvious target, and who can turn from farcical to wistful within a single sentence. Most of all it's a super impressive example of visual writing. The way Taylor mines metaphor and imagery from seeing/looking/light/colours is fantastic 🤩
September 23, 2012
In the title story of this collection which is more in length like that of a novella, a middle aged wife of a boarding school headmaster dreads the arrival of Hester, her husband’s cousin. Hester and Robert having been writing to one another for some time and Muriel feels excluded. Initially she is relieved when Hester arrives, not seeing in her the threat she had dreaded.
“Hester, in clothes which astonished by their improvisation – the wedding of out-grown school uniform with the adult, gloomy wardrobe of her dead mother – looked jaunty, defiant and absurb. Every garment was grown out of or not grown into.”
However, having underestimated Hester’s appeal Muriel soon reverts to her original jealousy. Robert and Hester get along well together, while Muriel and her husband have a strained relationship, which she only serves to worsen when she makes a fool of herself at a dance. Muriel makes Hester nervous, slowly driving her almost to collapse, Muriel wants rid of Hester and Hester feels it keenly and it makes her miserable.
Muriel is wonderfully terrible creation, as is the peculiar character from the village that Hester meets on her wanderings, the lonely Miss Despenser who lives in a filthy house with her memories of her dead sister.
This story is a wonderful start to a lovely collection. Anyone regularly reading my blog knows how much I love Elizabeth Taylor’s writing, and this collection demonstrates beautifully why I do. In ‘First Death of her Life’ a daughter sits by her dead mother awaiting the arrival of her father. I’m sure that this story is deeply autobiographical, as the death of Elizabeth Taylor’s own mother had a huge effect on her. There are too many stories in this collection to talk about each one individually but among my favourites were: Shadows of the world, Swan Moving and A Red letter Day. In Swan Moving, a swan comes to the pond of a small rather down at heel village. Its presence seems to instigate something of a change in attitude of the villagers to their environment- although they do go rather too far. However when the pool begins to dry up, the villagers decide to move their swan to another deeper pool a mile away.
“The swan sat on the front seat beside the Vicar and the manservant sat behind. When they drove away, the crowd waved and cheered as if seeing off bride and bridegroom. The swan surveyed them with indifference. His feet were splayed out in an ungainly way on a piece of sacking and, as the car moved forward, he crooked his neck and began to cleanse from his plumage the trace of human hands.”
In ‘Red Letter Day’ a mother and son go out for the afternoon, the mother collecting her son from boarding school, a day so looked forward to, is of course a small disappointment. Elizabeth Taylor is a master at showing us the small everyday events that loom large in people’s lives, the way people act, speak and think, ring so beautifully, and often poignantly true. Shadows of the World is just so well written, a subtle domestic story, a woman shares a drink with a male friend, awaits her husband’s arrival home, her daughter is put to bed, her son watches over his cat as she gives birth to four kittens. He imagines the kittens later running and playing around the house.
There is though, plenty of Elizabeth Taylor’s wit in evidence. She was such a wonderfully sharp observer of people, the way they speak particularly; she must have had just as sharp an ear for speech, as she had for the way people act. In ‘Nods & Becks and Wreathѐd Smiles’ a group of women discuss childbirth while having tea in a café.
“Well it was certainly the worst experience I ever had,” Mrs Howard said emphatically. ‘I hope never to go through –‘
‘I thought neuralgia was worse,’ Mrs Graham forgot herself enough to say.
At first, they were too surprised to speak. After all, men could have neuralgia. Then Mrs Miller gave her own special little laugh. It was light as thistledown. It meant that Mrs Graham only said that to be different, probably because she was vegetarian.”
I do so adore Elizabeth Taylor’s writing, I think her short stories are masterly, and I am very fussy about short stories, I used to think I didn’t much care for them. These were a joy, and I am sure they are stories that I will happily return to again and again.
“Hester, in clothes which astonished by their improvisation – the wedding of out-grown school uniform with the adult, gloomy wardrobe of her dead mother – looked jaunty, defiant and absurb. Every garment was grown out of or not grown into.”
However, having underestimated Hester’s appeal Muriel soon reverts to her original jealousy. Robert and Hester get along well together, while Muriel and her husband have a strained relationship, which she only serves to worsen when she makes a fool of herself at a dance. Muriel makes Hester nervous, slowly driving her almost to collapse, Muriel wants rid of Hester and Hester feels it keenly and it makes her miserable.
Muriel is wonderfully terrible creation, as is the peculiar character from the village that Hester meets on her wanderings, the lonely Miss Despenser who lives in a filthy house with her memories of her dead sister.
This story is a wonderful start to a lovely collection. Anyone regularly reading my blog knows how much I love Elizabeth Taylor’s writing, and this collection demonstrates beautifully why I do. In ‘First Death of her Life’ a daughter sits by her dead mother awaiting the arrival of her father. I’m sure that this story is deeply autobiographical, as the death of Elizabeth Taylor’s own mother had a huge effect on her. There are too many stories in this collection to talk about each one individually but among my favourites were: Shadows of the world, Swan Moving and A Red letter Day. In Swan Moving, a swan comes to the pond of a small rather down at heel village. Its presence seems to instigate something of a change in attitude of the villagers to their environment- although they do go rather too far. However when the pool begins to dry up, the villagers decide to move their swan to another deeper pool a mile away.
“The swan sat on the front seat beside the Vicar and the manservant sat behind. When they drove away, the crowd waved and cheered as if seeing off bride and bridegroom. The swan surveyed them with indifference. His feet were splayed out in an ungainly way on a piece of sacking and, as the car moved forward, he crooked his neck and began to cleanse from his plumage the trace of human hands.”
In ‘Red Letter Day’ a mother and son go out for the afternoon, the mother collecting her son from boarding school, a day so looked forward to, is of course a small disappointment. Elizabeth Taylor is a master at showing us the small everyday events that loom large in people’s lives, the way people act, speak and think, ring so beautifully, and often poignantly true. Shadows of the World is just so well written, a subtle domestic story, a woman shares a drink with a male friend, awaits her husband’s arrival home, her daughter is put to bed, her son watches over his cat as she gives birth to four kittens. He imagines the kittens later running and playing around the house.
There is though, plenty of Elizabeth Taylor’s wit in evidence. She was such a wonderfully sharp observer of people, the way they speak particularly; she must have had just as sharp an ear for speech, as she had for the way people act. In ‘Nods & Becks and Wreathѐd Smiles’ a group of women discuss childbirth while having tea in a café.
“Well it was certainly the worst experience I ever had,” Mrs Howard said emphatically. ‘I hope never to go through –‘
‘I thought neuralgia was worse,’ Mrs Graham forgot herself enough to say.
At first, they were too surprised to speak. After all, men could have neuralgia. Then Mrs Miller gave her own special little laugh. It was light as thistledown. It meant that Mrs Graham only said that to be different, probably because she was vegetarian.”
I do so adore Elizabeth Taylor’s writing, I think her short stories are masterly, and I am very fussy about short stories, I used to think I didn’t much care for them. These were a joy, and I am sure they are stories that I will happily return to again and again.
October 15, 2012
The first novella was hard to warm to at first, with its self-absorbed protagonist deludedly bent on destroying her own happiness. Things look about when sharp, heartbreaking, pathetic Miss Despenser appears. This and all of these stories are leavened by hilarious, keen little lines. "Swan Moving" is pretty much perfect.
June 11, 2015
Oh yes, very good, very well written, lots of penetrating insights into individuals and their social interactions, but boy, taken as a group, these short stories are pretty depressing.
August 11, 2016
Elizabeth Taylor's short story collection is a tour de force. I have been a fan for years but I wish I had read her when much younger ,if only to see if my feeling changed towards some of her protagonists.
Here I just want to review Hester Lilley, a short story/novella and a wonderful creation with not a name or situation which does not resonate in some way. Some reviewers find Muriel , the chief protagonist a somewhat monstrous, certainly a self destructive woman, but I found myself entirely and completely 'on her side'. I have never been in her invidious position , that of having to have my husband's cousin, an orphan young woman, all youthful pathos and clumsiness and neediness come to live with us for an unspecified length of time, but I feel as if I know exactly what it would feel like. Awful, that's what it would feel like!
Hester , self absorbed, moony, embarrassed to be in the position she is in, is to some degree sympathetic , but poor Muriel, made to feel old and crass ( her husband no longer wants to make love - brought about by her own distaste for it in the past admittedly) is led to make false steps, to make a bad situation worse by her brittle gaiety and apparent amused tolerance of the situation. "Of course you are in love with Robert " she says, only days after Hester's arrival. Which Hester , forgetting she was in love with some young man only weeks before, duly starts to be..........
Tears, blundering about in the moonlight etc etc, bring Hester to the graveyard where she encounters Miss Depenser, last relic of the local landed gentry and as sad a character as can be found in fiction anywhere. A masterful portrait of a woman, old, lonely, a drinker barely tolerated at the local pub,living in utter squalor in a cottage with her haughty cat her only company and barely holding on to sanity.
Miss Depenser would love to have Hester stay , if only overnight, showing her pictures of her dead sister, the last person in the world to care for her. But Hester is 'rescued ' by Hugh , Robert's friend and borne away to be looked after. Miss Despenser's attempts to prevent this and to keep Hester there are simply heartbreaking .
Clearly my sympathies are all with the middle-aged and elderly, but such is Elizabeth Taylor's skill that I can imagine a reader, younger than me feeling quite otherwise .
Here I just want to review Hester Lilley, a short story/novella and a wonderful creation with not a name or situation which does not resonate in some way. Some reviewers find Muriel , the chief protagonist a somewhat monstrous, certainly a self destructive woman, but I found myself entirely and completely 'on her side'. I have never been in her invidious position , that of having to have my husband's cousin, an orphan young woman, all youthful pathos and clumsiness and neediness come to live with us for an unspecified length of time, but I feel as if I know exactly what it would feel like. Awful, that's what it would feel like!
Hester , self absorbed, moony, embarrassed to be in the position she is in, is to some degree sympathetic , but poor Muriel, made to feel old and crass ( her husband no longer wants to make love - brought about by her own distaste for it in the past admittedly) is led to make false steps, to make a bad situation worse by her brittle gaiety and apparent amused tolerance of the situation. "Of course you are in love with Robert " she says, only days after Hester's arrival. Which Hester , forgetting she was in love with some young man only weeks before, duly starts to be..........
Tears, blundering about in the moonlight etc etc, bring Hester to the graveyard where she encounters Miss Depenser, last relic of the local landed gentry and as sad a character as can be found in fiction anywhere. A masterful portrait of a woman, old, lonely, a drinker barely tolerated at the local pub,living in utter squalor in a cottage with her haughty cat her only company and barely holding on to sanity.
Miss Depenser would love to have Hester stay , if only overnight, showing her pictures of her dead sister, the last person in the world to care for her. But Hester is 'rescued ' by Hugh , Robert's friend and borne away to be looked after. Miss Despenser's attempts to prevent this and to keep Hester there are simply heartbreaking .
Clearly my sympathies are all with the middle-aged and elderly, but such is Elizabeth Taylor's skill that I can imagine a reader, younger than me feeling quite otherwise .
November 22, 2017
Originally issued in 1954, Hester Lilly was Elizabeth Taylor’s first volume of stories. (It’s also my first experience of her short fiction.) There are some brilliant stories here, up there with some of the best scenes from her longer works. The titular piece, in particular, encapsulates many of this writer’s key trademarks: her ability to create nuanced characters with real emotional depth; her acute observations of the subtleties of human interactions; and her capacity to elicit the reader’s sympathy for difficult individuals in spite of their inherent flaws. I’ll come back to this story at the end of my review; but first, a few words about the collection itself.
Hester Lilly comprises seventeen stories of varying length, from brief sketches lasting a couple of pages to the novella-sized titular piece which opens the collection. As with other collections I’ve reviewed, I’m not going try to cover every story; instead, I’ll try to focus on a few favourites to give you a flavour of the volume as a whole.
To read my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2017...
Hester Lilly comprises seventeen stories of varying length, from brief sketches lasting a couple of pages to the novella-sized titular piece which opens the collection. As with other collections I’ve reviewed, I’m not going try to cover every story; instead, I’ll try to focus on a few favourites to give you a flavour of the volume as a whole.
To read my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2017...
April 21, 2020
Some of these short stories I read previously in another Elizabeth Taylor collection. She is not what you, or I , assumed her to be- prosaically of a time period and Pym-ish (there are elements of that, but largely they're on different continents). She is surprisingly modern. Hester Lily is a gothic-ish telling of womanhood and youth, sodden with Taylor prose. The latter stories are varied, sprightly and much more enjoyable a read. Pathos and humour combined. Taking Mother Out: familial relations, Spry Old Character: seemingly funny ouveture with a swift melancholia of your place in the world, First Death of Her Life: 'me, me, me', Gravement Endommage: fantastic post-war marriage in turmoil itself, An Idea of Age: what I imagine it would be like to meet Isabella Blow as a child, Nods & Becks & Wreathed Smiles: wonderful tea party gossiping, A Sad Garden: good grief, Shadows of the World: imagine having the misnomer of a famous author, The Light of Day: a woman;s work is never done, Swan Moving: fantastic; my pick of the bunch, A Red-Letter Day: teenagers hey?, The Beginning of a Story: death and love and family, always intertwined, Oasis of Gaiety: you can't pick your family but you can control your own life, Plenty Good Fiesta: wonderful story, Simone: a cat fight, I Live in a World of Make Believe: laughed at the end.
January 1, 2025
As much as I love Elizabeth Taylor's novels, I must confess these short stories were a bit ordinary. Of the 17, I only gave 5-stars to 3 of them.
The title story Hester Lilly was very well-written and long enough to almost qualify as a novella. I felt Taylor weaving her usual magic around complicated marriage situations and how jealousy can be a demon and destructive.
Spry old Character is a story about a discarded old man who has been blinded with age. He wants to play the horses, not weave baskets, and he figures out a way to make it happen. I enjoyed his defiance, even though he was not wholly lovable.
Swan Moving A story about not being satisfied with your blessings and trying to make them more; or perhaps just about how hard it is to hold onto beauty. You choose.
The other stories varied between four and two stars and were mostly forgettable. I understand this is Taylor's first collection. I suspect they will get better as I read on.
The title story Hester Lilly was very well-written and long enough to almost qualify as a novella. I felt Taylor weaving her usual magic around complicated marriage situations and how jealousy can be a demon and destructive.
Spry old Character is a story about a discarded old man who has been blinded with age. He wants to play the horses, not weave baskets, and he figures out a way to make it happen. I enjoyed his defiance, even though he was not wholly lovable.
Swan Moving A story about not being satisfied with your blessings and trying to make them more; or perhaps just about how hard it is to hold onto beauty. You choose.
The other stories varied between four and two stars and were mostly forgettable. I understand this is Taylor's first collection. I suspect they will get better as I read on.
June 15, 2020
A number of good stories gathered together in Elizabeth Taylor's first collection first published in 1954 and very much of its time. For me, the best were Hester Lilly, a longish story of a wife's jealousy toward her young cousin, Swan-moving, A Red-letter Day, in which characters from the novel A View of the Harbour appear, The Beginning of a Story, Plenty Good Fiesta, Simone, and I Live in a World of Make-believe. All are readable and rereadable. There was no writer as perceptive as Taylor and some of her stories are as good as or better than her novels. Highly recommended.
April 25, 2022
If there's a short story collection that can be said to give you haunting glimpses into the human condition, this is it. Beautiful, poignant, terribly sad but also lilting.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews