In 1917 Peter Taylor was born in Trenton, Tennessee. His mother, Katherine, was a daughter of Tennessee Governor Robert Taylor; his father, Matthew, was descended from a prominent western Tennessee family. Not surprisingly, much of Taylor's short fiction, including "A Spinster's Tale," depicts the lives of upper-middle-class residents of Tennessee.

Taylor's fiction reflects the changing environment of the American South. Southern culture revered tradition, but it was nonetheless changing rapidly during Taylor's youth: new, modern cities were replacing the largely rural landscape of the past, the established roles of men and women seemed to be destabilizing, and African Americans were challenging laws of racial separatism. Taylor's fiction reflects all of these subjects, though sometimes in only the most indirect way.

Taylor spent a year in England after high school and then returned to America. He attended several colleges in the late 1930s. His story, "A Spinster's Tale...