Although still in print, the novelist Elizabeth Taylor seems to be generally overlooked, and perhaps on the brink of being forgotten unless some director is inspired to make a film of one of her books, as was the late Dan Ireland for “Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont” in 2006, establishing this as perhaps her best-known work. Taylor was probably resigned to be eclipsed from the outset by the coincidence of sharing her name with the film star who shot to fame in “National Velvet” in 1944, shortly before the publication of the first of the author’s twelve novels, “At Mrs. Lippincote’s”.

Despite having been described as “her most sex-infused work”, Taylor’s eighth novel, “In a Summer Season”, published in 1961, reminds me of Jane Austen as she might have written if living in the 1930s-1950s. Although the tale switches between arguably too many points of view, Taylor’s heroine is wealthy forty-something Kate Heron, recently widowed after a happy marriage, who has set tongues wagging in the local community by marrying Dermot, handsome and charming, but ten years her junior, and unable to hold down a job.

The main characters are not quite as aristocratic as Austen’s, although some casually count the odd titled friend, and Kate’s former father-in-law, the crusty Sir Alfred, has been knighted for his rags-to-riches success as a factory owner. They tend to fall into two groups: well-heeled and living on unearned income on one hand, on the other, like retired teacher Aunt Ethel, or Kate’s new husband Dermot, ruefully or resentfully aware of being obliged to trade on the good will of richer relatives.

While Austen’s focus is on young women’s attempts to find suitable husbands in the confined world of country houses and the Bath Assembly Rooms, Kate occupies a spacious house with a telescope providing a view of Windsor Castle, a live-in cook, daughter at boarding school and son moodily learning the ropes in the factory he is expected to inherit. The main issue is whether everyone is correct in assuming that her marriage to Dermot is doomed to fail, the question being when and how. Combined with sub-plots, this may all sound too trivial and dated to be worth reading. Yet, as with Austen, what raises this novel above unendurable banality is Taylor’s skill in combining comedy, acerbic wit and poignancy, although her acute observations are expressed through the thoughts and dialogues of her characters rather than the explanations of an older-style, sometimes intrusive narrator.

Another difference is that Taylor is more experimental in deliberately playing down plot narration , preferring to focus on particular scenes. So it is that, for instance, the two major events in the plot are only referred to, or inferred – in fact never fully explained – after they occur. Instead, the detail lies in apparently minor scenes, like Kate’s visits to the hairdresser “Elbaire”, the uncharitable atmosphere at the sorting of clothes for the village church jumble sale, or the accepted ritual of “seeing off” the children at Waterloo Station for the autumn term return to boarding school, with the firmly repressed fleeting doubts as to the justification for sending one’s offspring away in this fashion.

From this approach, we learn a good deal about the characters’ thoughts, the degree of self-delusion, and their views on each other – generally, they are more clear-sighted about the latter than themselves. Taylor also conveys the behaviour and outlook of people living in the 1950s very vividly, although she confines herself to a narrow and privileged section of society. Of course, the world has changed so much since then, that it may be difficult for readers under say forty to feel engaged.

I am particularly intrigued by the fact that this book was published in 1961 at a time of sea change, when the author could have gone either way between a “genteel” novel which formed a natural progression on from Jane Austen, and the “kitchen sink realism” of working class drama, with the abandonment of conventions. Elizabeth Taylor chose to “play safe” and stay “in line” with writers like Barbara Pym, rather than join the ranks of the “ground-breaking” works like John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger” (1956), Shelagh Delaney’s “A Taste of Honey”, or Lynne Reid Banks’ “The L-shaped Room” (1960). Admittedly, the acute sexual desire which is what attracts Kate to Dermot is described, but she remains essentially conformist, expecting to live as an appendage to a husband, accommodating his wants, rather than seeking independent self-fulfilment. The only somewhat caricatured “modern” touch is provided by Araminta, a neighbour’s uninhibited daughter who is training to be a model in London.

Although she lived into the 1970s, perhaps “The Swinging Sixties”, the pill and certainly the Sexual Discrimination Act, to name a few changes, came a little too late for Taylor to make the adjustment to an edgier style. However, it seems that in fact she was quietly radical in her thinking. It comes as a surprise to learn that, as a young woman, she belonged to the Communist Party, and she remained an atheist and a Labour voter in later life. So, it must have been a conscious choice to omit any evidence of this from the novel, apart from Kate’s atheism which did not prevent her from making wedding “vows before the God she does not believe in, without the slightest hesitation”, to quote Aunt Ethel.

It is a fair observation that a psychological study of privileged people can be as moving and insightful as one about those struggling in poverty, and Taylor does not shy away from displaying a capacity for ruthlessness when it comes to achieving her chosen (if somewhat abrupt and contrived) ending.

What is certain is that, if alive today, Elizabeth Taylor could have written some gripping soap operas.