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Caldwell maintains that because the contemporary literary establishment is "liberal," her books have not been fairly received. William M. Kunstler writes in Crawdaddy that some years ago, "in a letter to Newsweek, Caldwell accused the [New York] Times' editors of publishing 'monotonously vicious' reviews of her books 'when their reporters discovered how intensely I hated Communists--and their fellow travellers.'"
"If you are an anti-communist," Caldwell writes in On Growing Up Tough, "you are, per se, not a serious writer. I know. I've been through this." Caldwell sees the literary establishment as hostile to writers who share her convictions. "Many are the writers," Caldwell writes in On Growing Up Tough, "once famous thirty years ago, who are not read today or even known [because] they refused to become a part of the conspiracy against America, refused to shout for a second World War, refused to follow the Liberal/Communist line. So, they quietly disappeared from the awareness of readers." Taylor Caldwell,
despite her own politically conservative stance, seems in no danger of disappearing from the awareness of her more than thirty million readers.
Obituary
Born September 7, 1900, in Prestwich, Manchester, England; died of pulmonary failure resulting from lung cancer, August 30, 1985, in Greenwich, Conn. Novelist. Caldwell, who was described in the New
York Times as "one of the world's most prolific and best-selling authors," published the first of her more than thirty novels, Dynasty of Death, in 1938. The tone of her writing was considered masculine by the day's standards, which prompted the author's editor at Scribner's, Max Perkins, to convince her to write under the name Taylor Caldwell.
Many of Caldwell's novels, which are characteristically well researched for historical accuracy, are multigenerational sagas of the struggle for wealth and power, as typified by Testimony of Two Men and
Captains and the Kings, both of which were serialized for television. Though reviewers have generally praised Caldwell's narrative storytelling abilities, they have criticized her literary style. Some have found weaknesses in her characterizations, and some have deemed her plots formulaic and contrived, criticism
that Caldwell dismissed as being the result of her strong "anti-Liberal/anti-Communist" themes. The mixed critical response to her books, however, has not diminished her popularity with the general reading public. Caldwell also wrote religious fiction, including Dear and Glorious Physician and I, Judas, and published one novel, Time No Longer, using the pseudonym Max Reiner. She also wrote under the pen
name Marcus Holland.
Information provided under copyright by Gale Research.
Taken from Barnes & Noble
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