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Taylor Caldwell

Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell was an Anglo-American novelist and prolific author of popular fiction, also known by the pen names Marcus Holland and Max Reiner, and by her married name of J. Miriam Reback.

In her fiction, she often used real historical events or persons. Taylor Caldwell's best-known works include Dynasty of Death (1938), an epic story about intrigues and alliances of two Western Pennsylvania families involved in the manufacture of armaments, "Dear and Glorious Physician" (about St.Luke), and "Captains and the Kings". Her last major novel, Answer as a Man, appeared in 1980.

As a writer Caldwell was praised for her intricately plotted and suspenseful stories, which depicted family tensions and the development of the U.S. from an agrarian society into the leading industrial state of the world. Caldwell's heroes are self-made men of pronounced ethnic background, such as the German immigrants in The Strong City (1942) and The Balance Wheel (1951). Her themes are ethnic, religious and personal intolerance ( The Wide House , 1945), the failure of parental discipline ( Let Love Come Last , 1949) and the conflict between the desire for power and money and the human values of love and sense of family, presented in such works as Melissa (1948), A Prologue to Love (1962) and Bright Flows the River (1978).

During her career as a writer Caldwell's books sold over thirty million copies. She received several awards, among them the National League of American Pen Women gold medal (1948), Buffalo Evening News Award (1949), and Grand Prix Chatvain (1950). Caldwell was married four times altogether — the third time to William Everett Stancell, and the fourth and final time to William Robert Prestie, who was a follower of Subud (he died in 2002). She had two daughters, Judith and Mary (Judith died in 1979). She was an outspoken conservative and for a time wrote for the John Birch Society's monthly journal American Opinion and even associated with the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby. Her memoir, On Growing Up Tough , appeared in 1971, consisting of many edited-down articles from American Opinion . Caldwell continued writing until 1980, when a stroke left her deaf and unable to speak. She died of pulmonary failure in Greenwich, Connecticut on September 2, 1985.

Bibliography

• Dynasty of Death (1938)
• This Very Earth (1940)
• The Eagles Gather (1940)
• The Earth is the Lord's: A Tale of the Rise of Genghis Khan (1940)
• Time No Longer (1941)
• The Strong City (1942)
• The Arm and the Darkness (1943)
• The Turnbulls (1943)
• The Final Hour (1944)
• The Wide House (1945)
• This Side of Innocence (1946)
• There Was A Time (1947)
• Melissa (1948)
• Let Love Come Last (1949)
• The Beautiful Is Vanished (1951)
• The Balance Wheel (1951)
• The Devil's Advocate (1952) - speculative fiction about a near-future totalitarian America
• Maggie - Her Marriage (1953)
• Never Victorious, Never Defeated (1954)
• Your Sins and Mine (1955)
• Tender Victory (1956)
• The Sound of Thunder (1957)
• Dear and Glorious Physician (1958) - life of Luke the Evangelist
• The Listener (1960) (UK title: The Man Who Listens )
• A Prologue to Love (1961)
• To See the Glory (1963)
• The Late Clara Beame (1963)
• Grandmother and the Priests (1963)
• A Pillar of Iron (1965) - life of Marcus Tullius Cicero
• Wicked Angel (1965)
• No One Hears But Him (1966) (sequel to The Listener )
• Dialogues with the Devil (1967)
• Testimony of Two Men (1968)
• Great Lion of God (1970) - life of Paul of Tarsus
• The Child From the Sea (1970)
• Growing Up Tough (1971)
• On Growing Up Tough (1971)
• Captains and the Kings (1972)
• To Look and Pass (1973)
• Glory and the Lightning (1974) - life of Aspasia, mistress of Pericles
• Romance of Atlantis (1975) (with Jess Stearn)
• Ceremony of the Innocent (1976)
• I, Judas (1977) - life of Judas Iscariot (with Jess Stearn)
• Bright Flows the River (1978)
• Answer As A Man (1980)