Dora Taylor

Dora Taylor (1899-1976) [1] was a prolific author of prose, poetry and plays and a Marxist scholar who lived in South Africa from 1926 until 1963.

Biography

Dora Taylor and her husband, J.G. Taylor, arrived in South Africa from Aberdeen in 1924. They settled in the Cape Town suburb of Rondebosch, whereupon J.G. Taylor took up a lecturing post in the psychology department at the University of Cape Town.

Dora began writing book reviews for the Cape Times in the early 1930s and she and her husband were soon drawn into left-wing politics, where she played a significant role. inter alia in the Non-European Unity Movement, a highly distinctive South African liberation organisation.

Apart from her work in the Non-European Unity Movement, Taylor gave lectures in literature to a variety of student fellowship groups, and was also the author of a number of unpublished plays, novels, and poems.

In 1960, she and her family were forced to flee to England, where she remained in exile until her death.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

She was member of the Cape Town Repertory Theatre Society and editor of The Mime. She wrote the one-act plays Paradise Ltd and Mirage.

Sources

http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dora-taylor

https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA10231757_87

Corinne Sandwith. 1998. A Social Function for Literature? Two Women Critics and South African English Literary Studies, 1939-1948. In: Alternation: Vol. 5, No. 1 [2]

Numerous entries in the NELM catalogue.

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