Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor (1917-1994) was born in Trenton, Tennessee, and studied with Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and John Crowe Ransom as an undergraduate. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, Taylor taught at a number of schools until 1967, when he joined the faculty of the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, his home for the rest of his life. Best known for his short stories, Taylor also wrote three novels-A Woman of Means (1950), A Summons to Memphis (1986), and the Pulitzer Prize-winning In the Tennessee Country (1994)-and several plays. In 1978 he was awarded the Gold Medal in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1993 the PEN/Malamud Award for his lifetime contribution to the art of the short story.