Taylor Caldwell

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) was one of the most prolific and widely read authors of the twentieth century. Born Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell in Manchester, England, she moved with her family to Buffalo, New York, in 1907. She started writing stories when she was eight years old and completed her first novel when she was twelve. Married at age eighteen, Caldwell worked as a stenographer and court reporter to help support her family and took college courses at night, earning a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Buffalo in 1931. She adopted the pen name Taylor Caldwell because legendary editor Maxwell Perkins thought her debut novel, Dynasty of Death (1938), would be better received if readers assumed it were written by a man. In a career that spanned five decades, Caldwell published forty novels, many of which were New York Times bestsellers. Her best-known works include the historical sagas The Sound of Thunder (1957), Testimony of Two Men (1968), Captains and the Kings (1972), and Ceremony of the Innocent (1976), and the spiritually themed novels The Listener (1960) and No One Hears But Him (1966). Dear and Glorious Physician (1958), a portrayal of the life of St. Luke, and Great Lion of God (1970), about the life of St. Paul, are among the bestselling religious novels of all time. Caldwell’s last novel, Answer as a Man (1981), hit the New York Times bestseller list before its official publication date. She died at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1985.

Quotes

obsidiana_tornasolhas quoted2 years ago
Alas, this century of which tiny men are so proud! Does it have the splendor of the minds of Greece, and the glory of the law which was Rome? Does it have the scientists of Egypt, the philosophers and the prophets of Israel? Does it have beauty and magnificence and aspiring minds? It stands in dust and war and dinginess, heaped with ugly cities and scarred with the barren wastelands of the stripped earth, its forests felled for the manufacture of trash; its great rivers yoked to yield power and water to crowded and meaningless communities, its silences blasphemed, its retreats and sanctuaries overrun, its countryside howling with drab streets and noxious towns. You and man together—you have done this thing to a world once beautiful and crowned with greenness and fragrance.
obsidiana_tornasolhas quoted2 years ago
The fault lies with many of the past superior minds on Terra: they did not outbreed the baseborn and the vulgar and the stupid, though it was within their power. They were too gentle and too tolerant of the inferior. They refrained from reproducing, whereas the more apish reproduced in vast and multiplying hordes. They had no strong convictions, for they were dubious even of their own valid conclusions. Therefore, they abdicated to the mindless obstinacy of those who could reach no conclusions at all but the satisfaction of their animal instincts. What was more admirable in man, his rationality, his impulse to worship, his contemplative philosophy, his reverence for art, his passion for the true and beautiful, his awe before creation, his respect for the sanctity of the individual soul, his obedience to the laws of virtue and right conduct, has been obliterated in the vehement passion of the hordes for material gratification.
obsidiana_tornasolhas quoted2 years ago
Who can hide from the malicious man? His works are everywhere, his eye clear and without mist, his ear sharp and keen, his tongue tireless. He believes himself good
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