Taylor Caldwell

Taylor Caldwell was an Anglo-American author, born in Manchester, England before immigrating to the United States with her parents when she was still a child. Their move to the United was hard for the young family as the father died a few years into the move, leaving the family without a provider. The circumstances of her family never stopped the young Taylor from making something of herself. By the time she was in the second grade, she was writing short stories, and by age twelve, she had written :The Romance of Atlantis” her first novel, which was published in 1975. Her father, who was still alive at the time never approved of women trying to make a career in writing and sent her to be a binder’s assistant. When World War I broke out, she left her job to become a United States Navy Reservist. Caldwell would marry William F. Combs in 1919, with whom she had a daughter Mary in 1920. She would later work for the New York State Department of Labor in Buffalo as a court reporter, before becoming a member of the immigration tribunal in the Buffalo division of the United States Department of Justice. In 1931, she was divorced from her first husband William Combs and got her degree from SUNY Buffalo. Within a year, she would marry Marcus Reback, a fellow department of justice employee with whom she had Judith their only child.