For the first time, the complete stories of the master chronicler of
tradition and transformation in the twentieth-century South are
available in a deluxe two-volume Library of America boxed set.
Born and raised in Tennessee, Peter Taylor was the great chronicler of
the American Upper South, capturing its gossip and secrets, its divided
loyalties and morally complicated legacies in tales of pure-distilled
brilliance. Now, for his centennial year, the Library of America and
acclaimed short story writer Ann Beattie present an unprecedented
two-volume edition of Taylor's complete short fiction, all fifty-nine of
the stories published in his lifetime in the order in which they were
composed.
Volume one offers twenty-nine early masterpieces, including such
classics as "A Spinster's Tale," "What You Hear from 'Em?," "Venus,
Cupid, Folly and Time" and "Miss Leonora When Last Seen." As a special
feature, an appendix in the first volume gathers three stories Taylor
published as an undergraduate that show the early emergence of his
singular style and sensibility.
Volume two presents thirty stories including many of his most ambitious
works, among them "Dean of Men," a monologue delivered by a middle-aged
father to his long-haired son about the limits of idealism; "In the Miro
District," a parable of the Old South's enduring persistence in the New;
and "The Old Forest," one of Taylor's most celebrated works, the story
of a young man who jeopardizes his
impending marriage by consorting with a girl deemed beneath his station.
Here too are all five of Taylor's remarkable prose poems, stories in
free verse that demonstrate that great fiction is, at its highest pitch,
a line-by-line, image-by-image high-wire act. Two of the stories in this
volume, "A Cheerful Disposition" and "The Megalopolitans," are collected
here for the first time.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization
founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by
publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most
significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than
300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in
length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are
printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
