Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor was a U.S. author and writer.

Born in Trenton, Tennessee to a wealthy Nashville family, Taylor spent his early childhood between in Nashville and St. Louis until his father, an attorney, moved his practice to Memphis in 1936. Taylor enrolled at Rhodes College in 1936, studying under the critic Allen Tate. Tate encouraged Taylor to transfer to Vanderbilt University, from which he left to continue studying with the great American critic, John Crowe Ransom, at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, along with the poet Robert Lowell. He was also friends with Robert Penn Warren, Randall Jarrell, Katherine Anne Porter, Jean Stafford, and other significant literary figures of the time.

Considered to be one of the finest American short story writers, Taylor's fictional milieu is the urban South. His characters, usually middle or upper class people, often are living in a time of change and struggle to discover and define their roles in society.