Elizabeth Taylor (née Coles; 3 July 1912 – 19 November 1975) was a British writer.

She attended The Abbey School in Reading. She then worked as a governess, tutor, and librarian. She was a friend of the writer Ivy Compton-Burnett, of the novelist and critic Robert Liddell, and of the writer Elizabeth Jane Howard.

Elizabeth Taylor died of cancer.

Books

Novels

• At Mrs. Lippincote’s (1945)
• Palladian (1946)
• A View of the Harbour (1947)
• A Wreath of Roses (1949)
• A Game of Hide and Seek (1951)
• The Sleeping Beauty (1953)
• The Real Life of Angel Deverell (published as Angel,1957)
• In a Summer Season (1961)
• The Soul of Kindness (1964)
• The Wedding Group (1968)
• Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (1971)
• Blaming (1976), posthumous.

Short story collections

• Hester Lilly (1954)
• The Blush and Other Stories (1958)
• A Dedicated Man and Other Stories (1965)
• The Devastating Boys (1972)
• Dangerous Calm (1995, a selection of her stories and two previously unpublished short stories)
• Complete Short Stories (2012, all of the works in the first five short story collections)
• Elizabeth Taylor: A Centenary Celebration (2012, short stories uncollected in “Complete Short Stories” including unpublished and incomplete stories, and essays and letters)
• You’ll Enjoy It When You Get There: The Stories of Elizabeth Taylor (2014, a selection of her stories).

Short stories

• ‘For Thine is the Power’, Tribune, 31 March 1944
• ‘A Nice Little Actress’, Modern Short Stories, August 1944
• ‘Better Not’, The Adelphi, October–December 1944
• ‘A Sad Garden’, Modern Reading, March 1945
• ‘It Makes a Change’, The Adelphi, October–December 1945
• ‘Mothers’, Here Today 1945
• ‘Husbands and Wives’, New Short Stories 1945-1946, ed. John Singer, 1946
• ‘Ever So Banal’, Kite, Spring 1946
• ‘Simone’, Writing Today, Summer 1946
• ‘The Light of Day’, The Harpers Monthly, December 1947
• ‘Red-letter Day’, The New Yorker, 27 November 1948
• ‘First Death of Her Life’, The New Yorker, 19 March 1949
• ‘After hours of suffering’, Vogue, July 1949
• ‘The Beginning of a Story’, The New Yorker, 29 October 1949
• ‘Nods & Becks & Wreathed Smiles’, The New Yorker, 19 November 1949
• ‘Gravement Endommage’, The New Yorker, 7 October 1950
• ‘Plenty Good Fiesta’, The New Yorker, 14 July 1951
• ‘Oasis of Gaiety’, The New Yorker, 18 August 1951
• ‘The Idea of Age’, The New Yorker, 9 February 1952
• ‘Spry Old Character’, The New Yorker, 7 March 1953
• ‘Swan-Moving’, The New Yorker, 26 December 1953
• ‘Goodbye, Goodbye’, The New Yorker, 14 August 1954
• ‘Poor Girl’, The Third Ghost Book, ed. Cynthia Asquith, 1955
• ‘Hare Park’, The New Yorker, 14 April 1956
• ‘The Ambush’, The New Yorker, 2 June 1956
• ‘The True Primitive’, The New Yorker, 11 May 1957
• ‘The Rose, the Mauve, the White’, The New Yorker, 22 June 1957
• ‘The Blush’, The New Yorker, 17 August 1957
• ‘You’ll Enjoy It When You Get There’, The New Yorker, 23 November 1957
• ‘A Troubled State of Mind, The Cornhill Magazine, Spring 1958
• ‘The Letter-Writers’, The New Yorker, 31 May 1958
• ‘Perhaps a Family Failing’, The New Yorker, 5 July 1958
• ‘Summer Schools’, The New Yorker, 6 September 1958
• ‘The Benefactress’, The New Yorker, 5 December 1959
• ‘The Thames Spread Out’, The New Yorker, 19 December 1959
• ‘A Dedicated Man’, The New Yorker, 4 June 1960
• ‘The Prerogative of Love’, The New Yorker, 23 July 1960
• ‘Girl Reading’, The New Yorker, 29 July 1961
• ‘In a Different Light’, The New Yorker, 29 July 1961
• ‘As If I Should Care’, The New Yorker, 19 May 1962
• ‘Mice and Birds and Boy’, The New Yorker, 9 February 1963
• ‘Mr Wharton’, The New Yorker, 8 June 1963
• ‘The Voices’, The New Yorker, 20 July 1963
• ‘In the Sun’, The New Yorker, 18 April 1964
• ‘Vron and Willie’, The New Yorker, 16 January 1965
• ‘Hôtel du Commerce’, The Cornhill Magazine, Winter 1965/’66
• ‘The Devastating Boys’, McCall’s May 1966
• ‘Tall Boy’, The New Yorker, 31 December 1966
• ‘In and Out the Houses’, The Saturday Evening Post, 14 December 1968
• ‘The Fly-Paper’, The Cornhill Magazine, Spring 1969
• ‘Sisters’, The New Yorker, 21 June 1969
• ‘Well, Here We Are’, McCall’s December 1969
• ‘The Blossoming’, Saturday Book Story, 1972
• ‘The Wrong Order’, Winters Tale 19, 1972
• ‘Madame Olga’, McCall’s August 1973

Children’s book

• Mossy Trotter (1967)

Biography

• The Other Elizabeth Taylor, by Nicola Beauman (2009)