Robert Lewis Taylor (September 24, 1912 – September 30, 1998) was an American writer and winner of the 1959Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Born inCarbondale, Illinois, Taylor attendedSouthern Illinois University for one year.[1] The university now houses his papers.[2] He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a bachelor of arts in 1933.[citation needed]
After college, he became a journalist and won awards for reporting.[citation needed] In 1939, he became a writer forThe New Yorker magazine, contributing biographical sketches. His work also appeared inThe Saturday Evening Post andReader's Digest.[citation needed]
From 1942 to 1946, Taylor served in theUnited States Navy duringWorld War II. During his service, he wrote numerous stories andAdrift in a Boneyard, an extended fiction about survivors of a disaster. In 1949,The Saturday Evening Post commissioned a series of biographical sketches ofW. C. Fields. He published them together asW. C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes. Taylor continued to write fiction and biographies, including one onWinston Churchill.[citation needed]
Taylor's 1958 novelThe Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, about a 14-year-old and his father in theCalifornia Gold Rush, won the Pulitzer Prize and was purchased for a film, but eventually became a television series, instead.[3]A Journey to Matecumbe was adapted in 1976 as the Disney movieTreasure of Matecumbe.[4] His novelProfessor Fodorski served as the basis for the 1962 musicalAll American.[5]
Taylor died on September 30, 1998.[6][7]
