Dora Taylor was born in 1899 in Scotland. Her mother died when she was six years old and she was brought up by the headmistress of a school in Aberdeen. She finished grammar school, graduated with an M.A. in English literature from Aberdeen University, and became a teacher. Her future husband, James Garden Taylor, whom she met at university, started work as a lecturer in Psychology at the University of Cape Town in 1924, and after they were married in 1926, she moved to Cape Town where she lived until 1963. The couple had three daughters.
During the time she lived in Cape Town, she wrote articles on political and social issues, education and literature. She had numerous articles and reviews published in the newspapers, Cape Argus and Cape Times. She also had many articles published in the periodical, Trek, from 1939 to 1946, some under pseudonyms and some translated into Afrikaans. She gave lectures on literature, and was involved in the compilation of The treasure casket of the Junior Literary Society (Pty.) Ltd., an eight volume collection of short stories for children. She also wrote novels, short stories, plays and poems. Four of her early poems were published in Some Scottish verse: an anthology of contemporary Scottish poetry in 1928, and readings and informal performances of some of her plays were held, but her novels and short stories were not published during her lifetime.
In Cape Town she participated in the activities of multiracial groups opposed to the government’s racial policies, and she became a Marxist. She was a founder member of the Non-European Unity Movement. She worked closely with I.B. Tabata in his writing, and assisted him with his books, The awakening of a people published in 1950 and Education for barbarism in South Africa published in 1960. She edited and wrote the introduction to The dynamic of revolution in South Africa: speeches and writings of I.B. Tabata. She herself wrote a book called The role of the missionaries in conquest which was published in 1952, the author using the pseudonym, Nosipho Majeke.
Dora Taylor’s husband held a visiting post at Harvard University in the early 1960s. Because of the political climate in South Africa, with increasing detentions and bannings of people opposed to the government’s policy of apartheid, Dora Taylor, while in the United States in 1963, was advised not to return to South Africa. During the rest of her life she lived in Boston, then Toronto, then Zambia and finally, England. She died in 1976.
In 2008 a collection of her short stories was published by Penguin under the title Don’t tread on my dreams: tales from South Africa. In the same year her novel, Kathie, was published, and she was awarded the South African Posthumous Literary Award. Her novel, Rage of life, was published by Penguin in 2009.