Samuel W. Taylor

The Little Man Who Isn’t There

Peculiar People, Positive Thinkers, and the Prospect of Mormon Literature

As a Mormon writer, I have long been concerned that most of the books and magazine articles published nationally about the Mormons are written by Jews and Gentiles rather than my own people. In show…

A Mirror for Mormon’s | Richard F. Burton, The City of the Saints

A superlative is an automatic challenge, and when Mrs. Brodie calls City of the Saints “the best book on the Mormons published during the nineteenth century,” my impulse is to disprove it. At surface glance…

Little Did She Realize: Writing for the Mormon Market

So you want to write a Mormon novel? Great! Here’s a story for you:—

It’s about a Mormon bishop and his family, see, so you can get in all the little inside details about the L.D.S. people. The bishop’s wife is an extremely devoted mother of three children, two lovely daughters and a son who is a genius. The mother is so excessively devoted to her genius son that she drives him into a madhouse. But before he is locked up he has an incestuous affair with a sister which ruins her life, he causes his best friend’s suicide and drives his other sister into an unhappy marriage with a Gentile. His own disintegration causes his father, the bishop, to die of a broken heart.

How To Read a Mormon Scholar

My Father’s Six Widows

In view of the fact that my father had sacrificed both worldly goods and his chances in heaven for the dream of the great patriarchal family, it is ironical that the only time all six…

The Ultimate Disgrace

After writing Family Kingdom, which was the story of my father and the great family of six wives and three dozen kids, I made a special effort to become acquainted with those of my brothers…

Out of Limbo

The Second Coming of Santa Claus: Christmas in a Polygamous Family

Judah Among the Ephriamites: History of the Jews in Utah and Idaho by Juanita Brooks

Nightfall at Far West: Other Drums by Ruth Louise Partridge

The Closet Bluebird

The Animal Kingdom: Thy Kingdom Come by Peter Bart

If I Were Satan

How I Destroyed the Old Salt Lake Theatre

The Ordeal of Lowry Nelson and the Mis-spoken Word

The Golden Dream and the Nightmare: The Closet Crusade of A.C. Lambert