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The Other Elizabeth Taylor
This is the first biography of one of the greatest English writers of the last century. Betty Coles became Elizabeth Taylor upon her marriage in 1936. Her first novel At Mrs. Lippincote's appeared in the same year (1945) as the actress Elizabeth Taylor was appearing in National Velvet. Over the next thirty years, "the other Elizabeth Taylor" lived and worked in Buckinghamshire and published several titles of fiction. Nicola Beauman's biography draws on a wealth of hitherto undiscovered material.
Nicola Beauman is the author of A Very Great Profession: The Woman's Novel 1914–39, Cynthia Asquith, and Morgan: a Life of EM Forster. She founded Persephone Books in 1999.
Nicola Beauman is the author of A Very Great Profession: The Woman's Novel 1914–39, Cynthia Asquith, and Morgan: a Life of EM Forster. She founded Persephone Books in 1999.
444 pages, Paperback
First published April 23, 2009
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About the author
Nicola Beauman
10 books12 followersNicola Beauman is a British biographer and journalist, and the founder of Persephone Books, an independent book publisher based in Bath.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
August 29, 2023
This is undoubtedly a partisan biography: Beauman is positively gushing about Taylor and while I have a lot of sympathy for her sense of unfairness that Taylor has, like so many female novelists of the early to mid twentieth century, been sidelined, overlooked and marginalised, I'm not sure she'd make my objective list of 'best' novelists of that period, though she'd certainly be one of my favourites.
Taylor had a quiet life living in suburbs and commuter towns. She married a sweets manufacturer and had two children. She never had a job - other than writing. But when she was young she was an active member of the Communist Party, at a time when it was a left umbrella organisation making an anti-fascist stand. She left it in the 1950s. She also had a long-term affair during her marriage (her husband seems to have been a serial philanderer) which ended in a couple of abortions. So not such a quiet life after all.
Most of all, Taylor was a writer. She wrote compulsively and, as Beth says in her A View of the Harbour, not because she wanted to but because she couldn't not. She suffered from a lack of a support network, she literally had no-one to read her writing and to tell her whether it was any good or not. Her lover, Ray, was a painter and while he read her work, he was no reliable judge however much he gave her sense of self-belief a tentative boost.
It took Taylor years before she was published, and then it was initially short stories in prestigious magazines like The New Yorker. She was 'discovered' by John Middleton Murray (husband of Katherine Mansfield) and taken up by Elizabeth Bowen who wrote positive reviews and became a close friend. But even once Taylor's career was launched on both sides of the Atlantic, she was revered by a handful of fellow writers, sold commercially, but was never recognised by the literary establishment.
Beauman makes some rather predictable guesses about why that might have been so: that her books were 'feminine', domestic, had a small canvas. But so, largely, were Woolf's and Bowen's own novels. Taylor also refused to comply with a cult of personality approach to marketing books which was starting to evolve: she hated giving interviews and had nothing to say when she did, she didn't review or write for the press, she pigeon-holed herself as a suburban wife and mother whose books were a sideline and hobby - however much this did a disservice to her literary dedication and craftsmanship.
Readers, it seems, apart from a handful of critics largely overlooked what I'd describe as the bleakness and dark, astringent humour in Taylor, the crisp way her elegantly-started sentences could derail stylistically, the sudden depths of emotion that explode out of the everyday. She saw herself as a modernist, not a writer of 'and then and then and then' plotty stories, but impressionist in style, dealing in the minute epiphanies that punctuate every day life - as did, of course, Woolf, Mansfield and Bowen. But she was still hit by the criticism that her books reeked with the tinkle of teacups.
She even attracted a group of what we'd now call trolls, headed by Olivia Manning and Pamela Hansford Johnson who loathed everything she wrote and make personal attacks on her - behaviour which devastated introverted Taylor who was far more inclined to believe her bad reviews than her good ones. (Interestingly, Manning also thought Doris Lessing dull and precious, and believed she was herself a far better writer; and petulantly complained that Nadine Gordimer was only acclaimed because she was on the right side of the apartheid issue - so much for her literary judgements!)
Because there's little outward happening in Taylor's life, Beauman gives too much space to re-telling the plots of her stories and novels, and not with any particular insight either. I skimmed these sections as they're full of spoilers and obvious commentary.
Nevertheless, I found Beauman's emotive approach to Taylor's life moving - it feels like she was a woman who needed all the support she could get. And my biggest takeaway is a resolution to read Taylor's short stories and some of those novels I haven't got to yet - which is the best outcome a biography of an author can have.
Taylor had a quiet life living in suburbs and commuter towns. She married a sweets manufacturer and had two children. She never had a job - other than writing. But when she was young she was an active member of the Communist Party, at a time when it was a left umbrella organisation making an anti-fascist stand. She left it in the 1950s. She also had a long-term affair during her marriage (her husband seems to have been a serial philanderer) which ended in a couple of abortions. So not such a quiet life after all.
Most of all, Taylor was a writer. She wrote compulsively and, as Beth says in her A View of the Harbour, not because she wanted to but because she couldn't not. She suffered from a lack of a support network, she literally had no-one to read her writing and to tell her whether it was any good or not. Her lover, Ray, was a painter and while he read her work, he was no reliable judge however much he gave her sense of self-belief a tentative boost.
It took Taylor years before she was published, and then it was initially short stories in prestigious magazines like The New Yorker. She was 'discovered' by John Middleton Murray (husband of Katherine Mansfield) and taken up by Elizabeth Bowen who wrote positive reviews and became a close friend. But even once Taylor's career was launched on both sides of the Atlantic, she was revered by a handful of fellow writers, sold commercially, but was never recognised by the literary establishment.
Beauman makes some rather predictable guesses about why that might have been so: that her books were 'feminine', domestic, had a small canvas. But so, largely, were Woolf's and Bowen's own novels. Taylor also refused to comply with a cult of personality approach to marketing books which was starting to evolve: she hated giving interviews and had nothing to say when she did, she didn't review or write for the press, she pigeon-holed herself as a suburban wife and mother whose books were a sideline and hobby - however much this did a disservice to her literary dedication and craftsmanship.
Readers, it seems, apart from a handful of critics largely overlooked what I'd describe as the bleakness and dark, astringent humour in Taylor, the crisp way her elegantly-started sentences could derail stylistically, the sudden depths of emotion that explode out of the everyday. She saw herself as a modernist, not a writer of 'and then and then and then' plotty stories, but impressionist in style, dealing in the minute epiphanies that punctuate every day life - as did, of course, Woolf, Mansfield and Bowen. But she was still hit by the criticism that her books reeked with the tinkle of teacups.
She even attracted a group of what we'd now call trolls, headed by Olivia Manning and Pamela Hansford Johnson who loathed everything she wrote and make personal attacks on her - behaviour which devastated introverted Taylor who was far more inclined to believe her bad reviews than her good ones. (Interestingly, Manning also thought Doris Lessing dull and precious, and believed she was herself a far better writer; and petulantly complained that Nadine Gordimer was only acclaimed because she was on the right side of the apartheid issue - so much for her literary judgements!)
Because there's little outward happening in Taylor's life, Beauman gives too much space to re-telling the plots of her stories and novels, and not with any particular insight either. I skimmed these sections as they're full of spoilers and obvious commentary.
Nevertheless, I found Beauman's emotive approach to Taylor's life moving - it feels like she was a woman who needed all the support she could get. And my biggest takeaway is a resolution to read Taylor's short stories and some of those novels I haven't got to yet - which is the best outcome a biography of an author can have.
January 28, 2019
Nicola Beauman, the author of this biography of the British writer Elizabeth Taylor believes her subject is one of the great women writers of the mid-twentieth-century. As Beauman sees it, the reason Taylor isn’t better known is due to her failure to mingle with members of the literary establishment, her introverted unwillingness to promote herself, and her opting for a comfortable and conventional middle-class existence as wife (to a rather staid sweets manufacturer) and devoted mother of two. Taylor’s canvas was small. She focussed on domestic matters, and her work was easily accessible to women. (She was cruelly and hurtfully attacked by group of female writers, most notably Olivia Manning, but praised by Elizabeth Bowen and Kingsley Amis.) Furthermore, Taylor may have harmed her own reputation with her insistence on having lived a very quiet life in which nothing much happened.
I tend to agree that nothing much of interest did happen in Taylor’s life. She may have posed nude for the painter Eric Gill, whose artist colony she lived near. She joined the Communist Party as a young woman and remained a member for many years. She had a lengthy extramarital affair with Ray Russell, a painter who never came to much, whom she loved deeply for most of her life. (She kept up a lengthy correspondence with him, and it is upon this that Beauman relies heavily for many of the details of Taylor’s life.) Taylor appears to have had a couple of abortions related to this liaison. Her husband was aware of the relationship (though perhaps not the pregnancy terminations) and for a time seemed accepting of it, as he himself was quite the philanderer, and besides Elizabeth kept a nice house, was a good cook, and dressed stylishly to boot.
Having read eleven of Taylor’s twelve novels, I felt I was in a reasonably good position to read a biography of Taylor. Maybe not. I’d read none of her short stories, which are a major focus of Beauman’s book. In fact, Beauman believes that Taylor’s first five novels (particularly A Game of Hide and Seek) and her short stories are her best work. I can’t comment on Beauman’s assessment of the short stories, every single one of which is discussed, but I don’t agree with the biographer about Taylor’s first five novels being her best, nor am I overly enthusiastic or convinced by Beauman’s critical commentary on them.
I personally do not know if Elizabeth Taylor is one of the great British women writers of the last century. I don’t feel I’ve read widely enough to offer an opinion on the matter. What I do believe from my reading of Taylor is that there is a lot more going on in her books than first meets the eye, and that second and third readings are fruitful. One does not need a large canvas to expose the inner workings of the human heart, the secrets people would prefer to remain hidden, and Elizabeth Taylor did this well in beautifully controlled prose.
Rating: 3.5
I tend to agree that nothing much of interest did happen in Taylor’s life. She may have posed nude for the painter Eric Gill, whose artist colony she lived near. She joined the Communist Party as a young woman and remained a member for many years. She had a lengthy extramarital affair with Ray Russell, a painter who never came to much, whom she loved deeply for most of her life. (She kept up a lengthy correspondence with him, and it is upon this that Beauman relies heavily for many of the details of Taylor’s life.) Taylor appears to have had a couple of abortions related to this liaison. Her husband was aware of the relationship (though perhaps not the pregnancy terminations) and for a time seemed accepting of it, as he himself was quite the philanderer, and besides Elizabeth kept a nice house, was a good cook, and dressed stylishly to boot.
Having read eleven of Taylor’s twelve novels, I felt I was in a reasonably good position to read a biography of Taylor. Maybe not. I’d read none of her short stories, which are a major focus of Beauman’s book. In fact, Beauman believes that Taylor’s first five novels (particularly A Game of Hide and Seek) and her short stories are her best work. I can’t comment on Beauman’s assessment of the short stories, every single one of which is discussed, but I don’t agree with the biographer about Taylor’s first five novels being her best, nor am I overly enthusiastic or convinced by Beauman’s critical commentary on them.
I personally do not know if Elizabeth Taylor is one of the great British women writers of the last century. I don’t feel I’ve read widely enough to offer an opinion on the matter. What I do believe from my reading of Taylor is that there is a lot more going on in her books than first meets the eye, and that second and third readings are fruitful. One does not need a large canvas to expose the inner workings of the human heart, the secrets people would prefer to remain hidden, and Elizabeth Taylor did this well in beautifully controlled prose.
Rating: 3.5
August 22, 2012
I first read this biography in January 2010 – when I had only read three of Elizabeth Taylor’s novels. I have now read all but one – and have read some of the short stories too. Re-reading this book was for me a marvellous experience, as I feel I know Elizabeth Taylor a little better through her writing, and so I read it with a different perspective this time.
A few months ago I attended the Elizabeth Taylor day at Reading library with my friend Liz. It was a very good day, but as I said at the time the elephant in the room was this book. Although Nicola Beauman had permission for this book from John Taylor, Elizabeth’s husband, her son and daughter and some of her friends, notably Elizabeth Jane Howard, (who spoke that day) were very angered by it.
In this chronologically arranged biography of Elizabeth Taylor’s life and work, Nicola Beauman has written with affection, understanding and honesty. Although a great friend of Elizabeth Bowan, Ivy Compton Burnett and Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Taylor didn't really move in literary circles - she didn't attend the sort of events that many other contemporary writers did. She mainly stayed quietly at home, and was a wife and mother first, a writer second. Nicola Beauman asks the inevitable question, had Elizabeth Taylor been a writer first, would she have been a greater writer than she was? And did her name play a part in her having been so overlooked. For she has been overlooked, both by the literary establishment of the time - despite many really excellent reviews by other well thought of writers - and as a great English novelist since her death. For example Olivia Manning inexplicably loathed her work (as did others) and was often quite vicious about her. Elizabeth took any criticism terribly to heart, and it frequently led to her doubting her own abilities. She was short listed for the Booker prize for Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont in 1971 but failed to win any awards during her life.
Of course at the centre of this biography, and what makes it controversial, for some, are the extracts from letters between Elizabeth and her lover Ray Russell. Elizabeth Taylor married in 1936, and later at the end of the 1930’s she became friends with Ray Russell, they later became lovers. They corresponded for years, and when her husband told her it had to end, she ended it. Her family were very important to her, they came first. However she continued to write to Ray, though they didn’t meet again. Sadly it seems that Ray always loved her, and the view we have of him, presented to us by Nicola Beauman, is of a sad old man never reaching his full potential, he married late, and never got over the one great thing that happened to him. Elizabeth Taylor was a wonderful letter writer, many of the letters she wrote to others were destroyed long ago as were her instructions (she too would have hated this biography) but many of the letters to Ray Russell survived, and they show us how even in private she was a gifted, emotional writer.
While reading I couldn’t help but put myself into the shoes of Joanna Kingham and Renny Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor’s daughter and son. If Nicola Beauman had been writing about my mother (who is a similar age to Joanna Kingham) I would have been enraged, and offended. One thing that I hadn’t picked up on last time I read this book, leapt off the page for me this time. Nicola Beaman tells us that Elizabeth knew David Blakely – the man murdered by Ruth Ellis the last woman to be hung in England. She suggests that Elizabeth Taylor may have been slightly attracted to him; he was a man who seemed to attract older women. He is apparently the basis for the character of Dermot in In a Summer Season. I found this fascinating but had Elizabeth Taylor been my mother – I have found the following slightly offensive.
“Finally, Elizabeth – ironically and savagely – used herself as a model. She knew that despite the public persona of the well-behaved housewife to whom not much ever happened, she had a streak in her, indeed more than a streak, of the angry, obsessive, ruthlessly focused egotist. Privately she may not have set herself apart from Ruth Ellis the year before: one of the reasons for her anguish may have been that she thought, there but for the grace of God…”
Yet, for the enthusiastic reader of Elizabeth Taylor, this biography is a must, it is utterly compelling and the Elizabeth Taylor, who emerges from the inevitable shadows that all biographies leave behind them, is a woman I like enormously.
.
A few months ago I attended the Elizabeth Taylor day at Reading library with my friend Liz. It was a very good day, but as I said at the time the elephant in the room was this book. Although Nicola Beauman had permission for this book from John Taylor, Elizabeth’s husband, her son and daughter and some of her friends, notably Elizabeth Jane Howard, (who spoke that day) were very angered by it.
In this chronologically arranged biography of Elizabeth Taylor’s life and work, Nicola Beauman has written with affection, understanding and honesty. Although a great friend of Elizabeth Bowan, Ivy Compton Burnett and Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Taylor didn't really move in literary circles - she didn't attend the sort of events that many other contemporary writers did. She mainly stayed quietly at home, and was a wife and mother first, a writer second. Nicola Beauman asks the inevitable question, had Elizabeth Taylor been a writer first, would she have been a greater writer than she was? And did her name play a part in her having been so overlooked. For she has been overlooked, both by the literary establishment of the time - despite many really excellent reviews by other well thought of writers - and as a great English novelist since her death. For example Olivia Manning inexplicably loathed her work (as did others) and was often quite vicious about her. Elizabeth took any criticism terribly to heart, and it frequently led to her doubting her own abilities. She was short listed for the Booker prize for Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont in 1971 but failed to win any awards during her life.
Of course at the centre of this biography, and what makes it controversial, for some, are the extracts from letters between Elizabeth and her lover Ray Russell. Elizabeth Taylor married in 1936, and later at the end of the 1930’s she became friends with Ray Russell, they later became lovers. They corresponded for years, and when her husband told her it had to end, she ended it. Her family were very important to her, they came first. However she continued to write to Ray, though they didn’t meet again. Sadly it seems that Ray always loved her, and the view we have of him, presented to us by Nicola Beauman, is of a sad old man never reaching his full potential, he married late, and never got over the one great thing that happened to him. Elizabeth Taylor was a wonderful letter writer, many of the letters she wrote to others were destroyed long ago as were her instructions (she too would have hated this biography) but many of the letters to Ray Russell survived, and they show us how even in private she was a gifted, emotional writer.
While reading I couldn’t help but put myself into the shoes of Joanna Kingham and Renny Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor’s daughter and son. If Nicola Beauman had been writing about my mother (who is a similar age to Joanna Kingham) I would have been enraged, and offended. One thing that I hadn’t picked up on last time I read this book, leapt off the page for me this time. Nicola Beaman tells us that Elizabeth knew David Blakely – the man murdered by Ruth Ellis the last woman to be hung in England. She suggests that Elizabeth Taylor may have been slightly attracted to him; he was a man who seemed to attract older women. He is apparently the basis for the character of Dermot in In a Summer Season. I found this fascinating but had Elizabeth Taylor been my mother – I have found the following slightly offensive.
“Finally, Elizabeth – ironically and savagely – used herself as a model. She knew that despite the public persona of the well-behaved housewife to whom not much ever happened, she had a streak in her, indeed more than a streak, of the angry, obsessive, ruthlessly focused egotist. Privately she may not have set herself apart from Ruth Ellis the year before: one of the reasons for her anguish may have been that she thought, there but for the grace of God…”
Yet, for the enthusiastic reader of Elizabeth Taylor, this biography is a must, it is utterly compelling and the Elizabeth Taylor, who emerges from the inevitable shadows that all biographies leave behind them, is a woman I like enormously.
.
December 24, 2021
Not a great bio, but it is all we have. As she destroyed pretty much all of her correspondence, and was an intensely private person, she probably would have hated that it exists (her kids sure do). However, if it gets more people reading her, or raises her profile closer to where it should be, then great.
March 21, 2022
Considering that this is the first biography of the criminally neglected Taylor, it's a little bemusing that her family has made it such a source of contention, deploring its entire enterprise and publicly excoriating its author. Give Beauman some credit, though, for Taylor deserves the insightful and outstanding treatment she is given here, with every modicum of respect, even with the sensitive matters. She even waited until Taylor's husband passed away before publishing it. But her kids weren't having it (letters thought long destroyed, as Taylor herself had done and asked others to do, were still in the possession of her still-living lover, revealing a good decade of extramarital love and so on).
That drama aside, there is much to love here. Taylor was always a bit of an odd pancake and her neglect only reinforces this. Her taut and perfect prose has long been misunderstood and even maligned (especially by what her friend Robert Liddell playfully called the Anti-Taylor League of British women authors who loathed ET), because rather than succumb to her passions and leave her family and run off with the fellow artist she was having an affair with, like any good Bohemian, she instead chose the family life, growing ever more and more middle-class, a choice of fate that decidedly sealed her reputation for decades. No one knew about the affair and no one outside of her small group of artist friends really knew of the sacrifices she'd made, but she was the more an astute and wonderful writer for it, I think, and I think she knew that in the end.
There's a wealth of detail of her famously "uneventful" life, her friendships with a small circle of like authors and artists and penetrating looks at pretty much everything she wrote. The personal nuances to all her works, especially, her novels, that are presented here will make you see many of them in a new light and are worth reading, all that other controversy aside.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Taylor is one of the greats of English literature. This book will give you a more open view of how that came to be.
That drama aside, there is much to love here. Taylor was always a bit of an odd pancake and her neglect only reinforces this. Her taut and perfect prose has long been misunderstood and even maligned (especially by what her friend Robert Liddell playfully called the Anti-Taylor League of British women authors who loathed ET), because rather than succumb to her passions and leave her family and run off with the fellow artist she was having an affair with, like any good Bohemian, she instead chose the family life, growing ever more and more middle-class, a choice of fate that decidedly sealed her reputation for decades. No one knew about the affair and no one outside of her small group of artist friends really knew of the sacrifices she'd made, but she was the more an astute and wonderful writer for it, I think, and I think she knew that in the end.
There's a wealth of detail of her famously "uneventful" life, her friendships with a small circle of like authors and artists and penetrating looks at pretty much everything she wrote. The personal nuances to all her works, especially, her novels, that are presented here will make you see many of them in a new light and are worth reading, all that other controversy aside.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Taylor is one of the greats of English literature. This book will give you a more open view of how that came to be.
June 10, 2016
This biography is a fast read. The way it is written keeps you wanting more. Elizabeth Taylor was a Post WW II writer who was very famous in her day, but who is now pretty much forgotten. I first became familiar with her after the film "Angel". What writings I do have of hers were found in charity shops.
Taylor started writing early in her life and it took twenty plus years to be published. When she finally got "noticed" it was by George Orwell of all people. From then on her professional writing career lasted to her death in the 1970's.
In her own way she was a very literary person and had her own circle.
This biography gives a whole new meaning and appreciation to her work.
Taylor started writing early in her life and it took twenty plus years to be published. When she finally got "noticed" it was by George Orwell of all people. From then on her professional writing career lasted to her death in the 1970's.
In her own way she was a very literary person and had her own circle.
This biography gives a whole new meaning and appreciation to her work.
April 18, 2021
I think (auto)biographies generally can be divided into three categories (although there are grey areas between these categories). Firstly, there are the biographies about people who have lived through interesting events, and this makes their biographies worth reading, even though the people who they are about may be unknown to us. Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth (though perhaps not the greatest example, since it is at least partly fictionalised) is such an example for me; I don’t really care about Jennifer Worth, but I find her observations on midwifery and nursing in the 1950s in the East End very interesting. Secondly, there are biographies about people who are so well-known that we may not necessarily have a personal connection with them, but are still interested in their biographies. For me, The Fall of the House of Byron was such a book; I didn’t know that much about the Byrons, but I had definitely heard of them, and was interested to find out more. Thirdly, there is a group of (auto)biographies of a person we have a personal connection with, and therefore wish to read about. The Other Elizabeth Taylor was such a book for me.
In fact, I wonder what someone who is not a fan of Taylor might get out of this book. Her life is not so interesting that we may wish to read about it just for the sake of it. In fact, Taylor portrayed herself as a perfectly boring housewife with a perfectly boring life (something that Nicola Beauman argues may well have harmed her reputation as a writer), and though that is definitely not as true as Taylor would have liked us to believe, there is at least a grain of truth in it. Furthermore, this biography heavily references her short stories and novels, and that may be confusing for people who have not read them. Still, I enjoyed myself and I’ve learned a lot of interesting information about some of my favourite books and short stories, and that is always valuable.
The one thing I would have liked, though, is for this book to have included headers for the pictures. Now I don’t know when they’ve been taken and of who they are (Taylor is recognisable enough, but sometimes I’m truly at a loss as to who the other people are). Overall, though, it’s a good biography of the other Elizabeth Taylor.
In fact, I wonder what someone who is not a fan of Taylor might get out of this book. Her life is not so interesting that we may wish to read about it just for the sake of it. In fact, Taylor portrayed herself as a perfectly boring housewife with a perfectly boring life (something that Nicola Beauman argues may well have harmed her reputation as a writer), and though that is definitely not as true as Taylor would have liked us to believe, there is at least a grain of truth in it. Furthermore, this biography heavily references her short stories and novels, and that may be confusing for people who have not read them. Still, I enjoyed myself and I’ve learned a lot of interesting information about some of my favourite books and short stories, and that is always valuable.
The one thing I would have liked, though, is for this book to have included headers for the pictures. Now I don’t know when they’ve been taken and of who they are (Taylor is recognisable enough, but sometimes I’m truly at a loss as to who the other people are). Overall, though, it’s a good biography of the other Elizabeth Taylor.
February 29, 2020
Considering that Elizabeth Taylor destroyed much of her correspondence as well as requesting Robert Liddell to destroy their correspondence, Nicola Beauman has provided the reader with an interesting portrait of a very private author. Elizabeth Taylor's work is little known or read, but her writing surpasses writers such as Olivia Manning or Pamela Hansford Johnson. Taylor's work is at times dark, ironic and preoccupied with the small happenings of daily life and ordinary people. Her prose is a joy to read, pared down but stylistically beautiful. Beauman's biography does justice to both Taylor's life and her writing.
December 9, 2020
I enjoyed this biography although I'm perhaps not the huge fan of Elizabeth Taylor that the author is. I enjoyed her novels, but there is a certain flavour of types of character and emotional experiences that tend to recur to the extent that they can seem repetitive. I should probably try her short stories too, although perhaps not right now, because summaries of so many of them are in this biography.
It was fascinating to find out about her life and how close some of the situations in the novels were to her own experience. She seems to have taken the "write what you know" mantra to heart.
It was fascinating to find out about her life and how close some of the situations in the novels were to her own experience. She seems to have taken the "write what you know" mantra to heart.
October 28, 2018
Full marks to Nicola Beauman for her sustained effort to raise the modern profile of the writer Elizabeth Taylor. This is one those most valuable biographies that provides very comprehensive descriptions of Taylor's novels and short stories as well as a detailed account of her life. How sad it is to learn of negative reviews which really hurt the writer. At the same time she was clearly being seen as one of the very best post-war British authors , in Britain and USA, where the New Yorker magazine published many of her short stories. Envy among some female British writers seems to be the cause. Maybe that reflects the smaller scene , today we have hundreds of highly regarded writers well known around the world and the idea of a list of 'best' would be a waste of time. Readers easily find their own valued authors. A strength in this book is the biographer's willingness to speculate, to question every aspect of her own findings in a genuine effort to explain why Taylor struggled to be rewarded in her lifetime.
September 15, 2023
Best author bio I've ever read.
November 27, 2025
An extremely readable and insightful mosey through the delights of a writer whose talents have been confined under the radar by many thumbs of the hoity-toity literati.
I offer as ultimate rebuttal, Ms Taylor’s own words…
“We talk too much cock about writing... We ought to think less about it, have fewer theories… Sod it all, I now think, I will write what I bloody will, & not worry whether or not it reflects the times.”
I offer as ultimate rebuttal, Ms Taylor’s own words…
“We talk too much cock about writing... We ought to think less about it, have fewer theories… Sod it all, I now think, I will write what I bloody will, & not worry whether or not it reflects the times.”
September 22, 2015
Very comprehensive and well researched,however due to the sheer amount of reviews,critics & publishers opinions,quotations from her books etc that this book is full of,I feel that Elizabeth's personality got a bit lost in it all.
A very good book for reference purposes,when I want to look up information about a novel of Elizabeth's that I'm reading at the time,definitely a keeper,but not a book I would be eager to read all the way through again.
There was just something about it that didn't hold the interest.A little overly drawn out.
A very good book for reference purposes,when I want to look up information about a novel of Elizabeth's that I'm reading at the time,definitely a keeper,but not a book I would be eager to read all the way through again.
There was just something about it that didn't hold the interest.A little overly drawn out.
July 22, 2019
3.5 Elizabeth Taylor was a wonderful British writer, publishing mostly during the 40's and 50's. I love her novels, so enjoyed reading about her life and inspirations. Beauman focused alot on Taylor's short stories, so I need to delve into them. Beauman is the owner of Persephone Books in London, I place I am dying to visit.
December 4, 2022
I believe it is quite a challenge to write about a person who was particularly good at destroying her paper traces but Nicola Beuamann did her best. A result of my reading this biography is an oder of few more books by Elizabeth Taylor.
December 29, 2018
I don’t feel I know her any better than before I began.
August 10, 2021
Having read two of her novels, I discovered that Elizabeth Taylor spent most of her married life in the same village where I live and was interested to learn more about her. She certainly seems to have had a racier existence than one might have expected, given her public persona as a stereotypical upper middle class Home Counties housewife.
Notwithstanding Nicola Beauman's occasional hagiographic tendencies this biography gives some useful insights into Elizabeth Taylor's work and may well encourage a wider readership of her novels and short stories.
Notwithstanding Nicola Beauman's occasional hagiographic tendencies this biography gives some useful insights into Elizabeth Taylor's work and may well encourage a wider readership of her novels and short stories.
October 25, 2012
This is a very good biography and study of Taylor's writing - but knowing that her son and daughter were angered and distressed by it and wished to be disassociated from it, inevitably colours my confidence in it as an accurate account of the life.
July 5, 2012
An exceptional biography of the novelist Elizabeth Taylor, who would have been 100 this year. Incredibly detailed and evocative, it has much of the poignancy and regret of Taylor's novels and short stories.
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