U.S. short-story writer, novelist, and playwright Peter Taylor (1917-1994) focused his works in the urban South. He taught at Kenyon College and the University of Virginia after studying under critics Allen Tate and John Crowe Ransom. His novel A Summons to Memphis (1986) won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and his collection The Old Forest and Other Stories (1985) won the PEN/Faulkner Award. He is best known for his short stories which mainly take place in contemporary Tennessee.
Kenyon Review Classics
Winter 1996
Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time
From the Spring 1958 issue. Their house alone would not have made you think there was anything so awfully wrong with Mr. Dorset or his old maid sister. But certain […]
Fiction
Winter 1991
The Witch of Owl Mountain Springs: An Account of Her Remarkable Powers
During my long lifetime, even since my early boyhood, there have been groups of girls of a certain lovely kind and character who have repeatedly turned up on my horizon. […]
Fiction
Winter 1990
Cousin Aubrey
In the Tennessee country of my forebears it was not uncommon for a man of good character suddenly to disappear. He might be a young man or a middle-aged man […]
Drama
Spring 1968
A Stand in the Mountains
PREFACE For readers of the play (and it is for playgoers who also read plays that I care most) I include this preface, which is a sort of history of […]
Fiction
Winter 1964
There
“Let me tell you something about the Busbys,” the old gentleman said to me. “The Busbys don’t wash themselves—not adequately. And especially not as they grow older.” That was how […]
Fiction
Summer 1959
Who Was Jesse’s Friend and Protector?
Family friends would always say how devoted Jesse Munroe was to my uncle. And Jesse himself would tell me sometimes what he would do to anybody who harmed a hair […]
Fiction
Spring 1958
Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time
Their house alone would not have made you think there was anything so awfully wrong with Mr. Dorset or his old maid sister. But certain things about the way both […]
Drama
Winter 1956
Tennessee Day in St. Louis
A Comedy ACT I In the big game room of the Tolliver house in St. Louis Miss Betty Pettigru and Mrs. Florence Blalock are occupied with a jig-saw puzzle. The […]
Fiction
Spring 1947
Allegiance
“Come in.” And: “Of course I remember you and knew I should the moment your voice came drawling on the wire.” The first one, two, three, four steps I take […]
Poetry
Summer 1939
The Furnishings of a House
The incommensurate odds and ends arrangeA riotous paisely table by my loungeAnd are the most of grace that I can showTo you, critical caller at my infare,Stiff in my ladder-back, […]
Weekend Reads
Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time
From the Kenyon Review, Spring 1958, Vol. XX, No. 2 Their house alone would not have made you think there was anything so awfully wrong with Mr. Dorset or his […]
Weekend Reads
Cousin Aubrey
From The Kenyon Review, New Series, Winter 1990, Vol. XII, No. 1 In the Tennessee country of my forebears it was not uncommon for a man of good character suddenly […]