Peter Taylor (Author)
Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor (born January 8, 1917 in Trenton , Tennessee , † November 2, 1994 in Charlottesville , Virginia ) was an American writer who received not only the PEN / Faulkner Award , but also the Pulitzer Prize .
biography
After attending school, he only studied from 1936 to 1937 at Vanderbilt University , in 1937 at Southwestern College and then at Kenyon College , where he earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in 1940 . He then did his military service in the US Army until the end of World War II in 1945 .
After the end of the Second World War he became a professor at Kenyon College and began his writing career at the same time in the late 1940s . He first made his literary debut in 1948 with A Long Fourth, and Other Stories , a collection of short stories based on the novella A Woman of Means (1950) under the titles The Widows of Thornton (1954), Happy Families Are All Alike (1959 ) and Miss Leonora When Last Seen and Fifteen Other Stories (1963) further collections of short stories followed.
In 1967 he accepted a position as professor at the renowned University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1969 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974. After teaching for several years, he continued his writing career and published two further collections of short stories under the titles In the Miro District and Other Stories (1977) and The Old Forest and Other Stories (1985). In 1986 he received the PEN / Faulkner Award for The Old Forest and Other Stories .
For his 1986 novel A Summons to Memphis , he received the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Novels . It was about the story of a family who moved to Memphis .
Most recently, The Oracle at Stoneleigh Court (1993) was a new collection of short stories and finally another novel entitled In the Tennessee Country (1994).
Many of his works dealt with the minor crises and conflicts in the life of the upper middle class in the southern states and especially in Tennessee . In many cases, his books direct their focus on manners and even more so on a disappearing society and the intrusion of reluctant truths in its upper classes.
Web links and sources
- Peter Taylor in the nndb (English)
- Biography (Homepage of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga )
- Biography (Tennessee Authors)
- Chambers Biographical Dictionary , p. 1478, Edinburgh 2002, ISBN 0-550-10051-2
Individual evidence
- ^ Members: Peter Taylor. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 29, 2019 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Taylor, Peter |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Taylor, Peter Matthew Hillsman (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 8, 1917 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Trenton , Tennessee |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 2, 1994 |
| Place of death | Charlottesville , Virginia |