Peter Taylor (1917-1994) was an American author and playwright whose stories set in the urban South reflected his own experiences and overall social changes remaking the region. Taylor's grandfather was a Confederate private under Nathan Bedford Forrest. His father, who eventually became a Tennessee politician, practiced law for many years. One memorable assignment found him kidnapped by the Night Riders, a militant band of tobacco farmers fighting the American Tobacco Company. Peter Taylor's father escaped while his partner was lynched. Taylor spent his formative years in St. Louis and Memphis before attending Kenyon College, where he later taught. He was married more than 50 years to the poet Eleanor Ross Taylor.
Taylor wrote three novels: A Woman of Means (1950), A Summons to Memphis (1986) and In the Tennessee Country (1994). A Summons to Memphis, perhaps Taylor's best-known work, won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It follows a middle-aged New York City editor called back to Memphis, Tenn., by his two deceitful sisters, who want to stop their elderly father from remarrying. Taylor also published eight short story collections, one of which, The Old Forest and Other Stories (1985), won the PEN/Faulkner Award. A Summons to Memphis was last published in 1999 by Vintage ($16, 9780375701177). --Tobias Mutter
