books in order

Elizabeth Taylor Books In Order

Novels

  1. At Mrs Lippincote’s (1945)
  2. Palladian (1946)
  3. A View of the Harbour (1947)
  4. A Wreath of Roses (1949)
  5. The Sleeping Beauty (1953)
  6. Angel (1957)
  7. A Game of Hide and Seek (1958)
  8. In a Summer Season (1961)
  9. The Soul of Kindness (1964)
  10. Mossy Trotter (1967)
  11. The Wedding Group (1968)
  12. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (1971)
  13. The Devastating Boys (1972)
  14. Blaming (1976)

Collections

  1. Hester Lilly (1954)
  2. The Blush (1958)
  3. A Dedicated Man (1965)
  4. Short Stories of Elizabeth Taylor (1995)
  5. Dangerous Calm (1995)

Novels Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Elizabeth Taylor Books Overview

At Mrs Lippincote’s

Mrs. Lippincote’s house, with its mahogany furniture and yellowing photographs, stands as a reminder of all the certainties that have vanished with the advent of war. Temporarily, this is home for Julia, who has joined her husband Roddy at the behest of the RAF. Although she can accept the pomposities of service life, Julia’s honesty and sense of humor prevent her from taking her role as seriously as her husband might wish; for Roddy, merely love cannot suffice he needs homage as well as admiration. And Julia, while she may be a most unsatisfactory officer’s wife, is certainly no hypocrite.

Palladian

When newly orphaned Cassandra Dashwood arrives as governess to little Sophy, the scene seems set for the archetypal romance between young girl and austere widowed employer. Strange secrets abound in the ramshackle house. But conventions are subverted in this atmospheric novel: one of its worlds is suffused with classical scholarship and literary romance, but the other is chaotic, quarrelsome and even farcical. Cassandra is to discover that in real life, tragedy, comedy and acute embarrassment are never far apart.

A View of the Harbour

In the faded coastal village of Newby, everyone looks out for and in on each other, and beneath the deceptively sleepy exterior, passions run high. Beautiful divorcee Tory is painfully involved with her neighbour, Robert, while his wife Beth, Tory’s best friend, is consumed by the worlds she creates in her novels, oblivious to the relationship developing next door. Their daughter Prudence is aware, however, and is appalled by the treachery she observes. Mrs Bracey, an invalid whose grasp on life is slipping, forever peers from her window, constantly prodding her daughters for news of the outside world. And Lily Wilson, a lonely young widow, is frightened of her own home. Into their lives steps Bertram, a retired naval officer with the unfortunate capacity to inflict lasting damage while trying to do good.

The Sleeping Beauty

Vinny Tumulty is a quiet, sensible man. When he goes to stay at a seaside town, his task is to comfort a bereaved friend. Vinny is prepared for a solemn few days of tears and consolation. But on the evening of his arrival, he looks out of the window at the sunset and catches sight of a mysterious, romantic figure: a beautiful woman walking by the seashore. Before the week is over Vinny has fallen in love, completely and utterly, for the first time in his middle aged life. Emily, though, is a sleeping beauty, her secluded life hiding bitter secrets from the past.

Angel

Writing stories that are extravagant and fanciful, 15 year old Angel retreats to a world of romance, escaping the drabness of provincial life. She knows she is different, that she is destined to become a feted authoress, owner of great riches and of Paradise House. After reading The Lady Irania, publishers Brace and Gilchrist are certain the novel will be a success, in spite of and perhaps because of its overblown style. But they are curious as to who could have written such a book ‘Some old lady, romanticizing behind lace curtains.’ ‘Angelica Deverell is too good a name to be true…
she might be an old man. It would be an amusing variation. You are expecting to meet Mary Anne Evans and in walks George Eliot twirling his moustache.’ So nothing can prepare them for the pale young woman who sits before them, with not a seed of irony or a grain of humor in her soul.

A Game of Hide and Seek

Harriet and Vesey meet when they are teenagers, and their love is as intense and instantaneous as it is innocent. But they are young. All life still lies ahead. Vesey heads off hopefully to pursue a career as an actor. Harriet marries and has a child, becoming a settled member of suburban society. And then Vesey returns, the worse for wear, and with him the love whose memory they have both sentimentally cherished, and even after so much has happened it cannot be denied. But things are not at all as they used to be. Love, it seems, is hardly designed to survive life. One of the finest twentieth century English novelists, Elizabeth Taylor, like her contemporaries Graham Greene, Richard Yates, and Michelangelo Antonioni, was a connoisseur of the modern world’s forsaken zones. Her characters are real, people caught out by their own desires and decisions, and they demand our attention. The be stilled suburban backwaters she sets out to explore shimmer in her books with the punishing clarity of a desert mirage.

In a Summer Season

Kate Heron, a wealthy, charming widow, has married a man ten years her junior, the attractive and feckless Dermot. Their special love arms them against the disapproval of conservative friends and neighbors until the return of Kate’s old friend Charles, intelligent, kind, and now widowed with a beautiful daughter. At first Kate watches happily as the two families are drawn together, only dimly aware of the subtle undercurrents beginning to disturb the calm surface of their friendship. Before long, however, even she cannot ignore the gathering storm.

The Soul of Kindness

In this novel, first published in 1964, Elizabeth Taylor skillfully and subtly demonstrates the terrible danger of self love, most deadly to those who live within its shadow ‘Here I am!’ Flora called to Richard as she went downstairs. For a second, Meg felt disloyalty. It occurred to her of a sudden that Flora was always saying that, and that it was in the tone of one giving a lovely present. She was bestowing herself. The Soul of Kindness is what Flora believes herself to be. Tall, blonde, and beautiful, she appears to have everything under control her home, her baby, her husband Richard, her friend Meg, Kit Meg’s brother, who has always adored Flora and Patrick the novelist and domestic pet. Only the bohemian painter Liz refuses to become a worshipper at the shrine. Flora entrances them all, dangling visions of happiness and success before their spellbound eyes. All are bewitched by this golden tyrant, all conspire to protect her from what she really is. All, that is, except the clear eyed Liz it is left to her to show them that Flora’s kindness is the sweetest poison of them all.

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont

On a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs. Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are magnificently eccentric and endlessly curious, living off crumbs of affection and snippets of gossip. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies boredom and the Grim Reaper. Then one day Mrs. Palfrey strikes up an unexpected friendship with Ludo, a handsome young writer, and learns that even the old can fall in love.

Blaming

While on holiday in Istanbul, tragedy strikes, and suddenly the comfortably middle aged, middle class Amy is left stranded and a widow. Martha, a young American novelist, kindly helps her, but upon their return to England, Amy is ungratefully reluctant to maintain their friendship: on home soil she realises that in normal circumstances, Martha isn’t the sort of person she would be friends with. But guilt is a hard taskmaster and Martha has a way of getting under one’s skin…

The Blush

Amongst the characters in this collection of short stories are the upright Mrs Allen, who unwittingly provides an alibi for her slackly corseted home help, and Emily, who has written fluent, amusing letters to a distinguished novelist for 10 years but descends into small talk when they meet.

Dangerous Calm

In 1945 the publication of AT MRS LIPPINCOTE’S launched Elizabeth Taylor’s career. The author of twelve novels and four collections of short stories, she excelled at unravelling the comedy of ordinary life. Dangerous Calm draws on her volumes of short stories to produce a fine selection of her work. Stories such as ‘Summer Schools’, ‘Flesh’ and ‘The Devastating Boys’ confirm her status as one of the finest short story writers. This selection also features two previously unpublished stories and three uncollected ones, including the late, poignant tale, ‘The Wrong Order’. Together they celebrate a formidable stylist whose work has delighted readers and critics for fifty years.

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