Barbara Taylor Bradford, a British journalist who became a publishing sensation in her 40s with the saga "A Woman of Substance" and wrote more than a dozen other novels that sold tens of millions of copies, has died. She was 91. Bradford died Sunday at her home in New York City. Starting with "A Woman of Substance," published in 1979, Bradford averaged nearly a book a year as one of the world's most popular and wealthiest writers, her net worth was estimated at more than $200 million and her fame was so high that her image appeared on a postage stamp in 1999.
Who was Barbara Taylor Bradford?
In 2007, Queen Elizabeth II awarded her an OBE (The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire).
Her books were published in 40 languages and sold more than 90 million copies around the world. With titles like “Breaking the Rules'' and ”Act of Will,'' she specialised in stories of women fighting for love and power in a man's world. Her favourite among her books was "The Women In His Life," inspired by her husband's escape from the Nazis.
Bradford was married for 56 years to German-born film producer Robert Bradford, who died in 2019. A native of Leeds, West Yorkshire, she was an only child in a working-class family who loved books early. As a girl, she had a story published in a local magazine. By age 16, she left school against her parent's wishes to become a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post. Over the next 30 years, she would work as fashion editor of Woman's Own Magazine, cover a variety of beats for the London Evening News and, in the United States, write a syndicated column about interior design.
Bradford: An author who wrote several best-seller books
Although she wrote children's stories and advice books, novels were her dream. "A Woman of Substance" was a multi-generational chronicle of the travails and triumphs of retail baron Emma Harte, who would be featured in several other Bradford novels. The book has sold more than 30 million copies and was the basis of a 1984 television miniseries starring Jenny Seagrove as a young Emma and Deborah Kerr as Emma late in life.
“And if you want to meet the real Emma, meet me,” Bradford told the Telegraph of London in 2009. "Emma had to be tough and ruthless at times: but then so am I. I have to be, as a businesswoman. And I'm a bloody good businesswoman."
Bradford and Emma Harte were linked by more than money: both had family secrets. As a young woman, Emma became pregnant by a man who refused to marry her and gave birth to a daughter. Years later, Bradford learned through her biographer that her own mother had been born out of wedlock. It is now believed that Bradford’s maternal grandfather was Frederick Oliver Robinson, the second Marquess of Ripon and owner of the Studley Royal estate in Yorkshire, which is now a World Heritage Site.
(With inputs from agency)
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