Frank E. Taylor, whose long publishing career included posts, often senior ones, at Reynal & Hitchcock, Random House, Dell, Avon and McGraw-Hill, died in Key West, Fla., November 16 after a long battle with cancer. He was 83.
Taylor began at Reynal & Hitchcock in the mid-1940s, where he became editor-in-chief, first hired noted editor Albert Erskine, and published Lillian Smith's Strange Fruit, the first work of Arthur Miller, Alfred Kazin's On Native Ground and Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano. He also discovered Ralph Ellison.
A stint at Random was followed by a move to Dell, where Taylor supervised Laurel Editions and was instrumental in bringing many serious writers to the list. His acquaintance with Miller led to him being the producer of the movie The Misfits.
He later moved to Avon, where he hired Peter Mayer and helped revive the line. Then it was on to McGraw-Hill, where he was editor-in-chief of the trade division and published works by Marshall McLuhan, Eldridge Cleaver and Vladimir Nabokov. He had a brief stint at Mitchell Beazley, where he published The Joy of Gay Sex, and had an imprint for a time at Praeger before retiring 20 years ago.
Mayer said of him: "He did everything in grand style, and the expenses were enormous. To his credit, he never saw himself as the servant of the corporation. There was charm in that--he was never a corporate lackey--but he couldn't last because, ultimately, he didn't pay Caesar his due."
