Peter Taylor

For the first time, the complete stories of an American Chekhov, a master chronicler of tradition and transformation in the modern South

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 wasthe great chronicler of the American Upper South, capturing its gossipand secrets, its divided loyalties and morally complicatedlegacies in tales of pure-distilled brilliance. Now, for hiscentennial year, the Library of America and acclaimed shortstory writer Ann Beattie present an unprecedented two-volumeedition of Taylor's complete short fiction, all fifty-nine of thestories published in his lifetime in the order in which they werecomposed.

Volume one offers twenty-nine early masterpieces,including such classics as "A Spinster's Tale," "What YouHear from 'Em?," "Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time" and "MissLeonora 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 hissingular style and sensibility.

Volume two presents thirty stories includingmanyof his most ambitious works, among them "Dean ofMen," a monologue delivered by a middle-agedfather to his long-haired son about the limits ofidealism; "In the Miro District," a parable of the OldSouth's enduring persistence in the New; and "The OldForest," one of Taylor's most celebrated works, the story of a young man who jeopardizes his
impending marriage by consorting with a girldeemed beneath his station.Here too are all five of Taylor'sremarkable prose poems, stories in free verse thatdemonstrate that great fiction is, at its highest pitch,a line-by-line, image-by-image high-wire act. Twoof the stories in this volume, "A Cheerful Disposition" and "TheMegalopolitans," are collected here for the first time.

LIBRARY OF AMERICAis 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.