Taylor Caldwell

1900–1985 · British-born American novelist

Janet Miriam Caldwell, who wrote as Taylor Caldwell (and under the pen names Marcus Holland and Max Reiner), was one of the most commercially successful popular novelists of the mid-20th century — more than forty books over a forty-three-year career, selling on the order of thirty million copies. Her speciality was the big researched historical novel: Dear and Glorious Physician on Saint Luke, The Earth Is the Lord’s on Genghis Khan, and in 1965 A Pillar of Iron, on Cicero and the republic he could not save. Her publisher still advertises the book as built on “hundreds of speeches, voluminous private correspondence, and ancient texts and manuscripts” — which is precisely why readers keep mistaking her invented dialogue for the historical record.

Traced to source

4 quotes we’ve traced to Taylor Caldwell

“A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble”

Disputed

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within”

Disputed

“Every Ambitious Would-Be Empire Clarions It Abroad That She Is Conquering the World to Bring It Peace”

Disputed

“The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance”

Disputed

On the research bench

Commonly pinned on Taylor Caldwell — under review

1 line flagged as pinned on Taylor Caldwell and queued for a full source trace — not yet verified.

“We Are Never Alone. Not When the Night Is Darkest, the Wind Coldest”

Disputed

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