Robert Lewis Taylor facts for kids
Robert Lewis Taylor (born September 24, 1912, died September 30, 1998) was an American writer. He won a very important award called the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1959 for one of his books.
Early Life and School
Robert Lewis Taylor was born in Carbondale, Illinois. He went to Southern Illinois University for a year. Later, he studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and earned a degree in 1933. Today, his old papers and writings are kept at Southern Illinois University.
Becoming a Writer
After college, Robert Lewis Taylor became a journalist. A journalist is someone who writes for newspapers or magazines. He won awards for his reporting. In 1939, he started writing for The New Yorker magazine. He wrote short life stories about different people for the magazine. His articles also appeared in other popular magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and Reader's Digest.
From 1942 to 1946, Taylor served in the United States Navy during World War II. Even while serving, he kept writing many stories. He wrote a longer story called Adrift in a Boneyard about people who survived a big disaster.
In 1949, The Saturday Evening Post asked him to write a series of short life stories about a famous comedian named W. C. Fields. Taylor later put all these stories together into a book called W. C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes. He continued to write many books, including both made-up stories (fiction) and true stories about people (biographies). One of his biographies was about Winston Churchill, a famous leader.
Books and Movies
One of Taylor's most famous books was The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, published in 1958. This book was about a 14-year-old boy and his father during the California Gold Rush. This novel won the Pulitzer Prize, which is a big honor for writers. The book was planned to become a movie, but it ended up being a television series instead.
Another one of his books, A Journey to Matecumbe, was made into a Disney movie in 1976 called Treasure of Matecumbe. His novel Professor Fodorski was also used as the idea for a musical play in 1962 called All American.
Robert Lewis Taylor passed away on September 30, 1998.
