Eleanor Hibbert

Eleanor Alice Burford Hibbert
Born Eleanor Alice Burford
1 September 1906(1906-09-01)
Canning Town, London, England
Died 18 January 1993(1993-01-18) (aged 86)
At sea between Greece and Port Said, Egypt
Pen name Eleanor Burford,
Jean Plaidy,
Elbur Ford,
Kathleen Kellow,
Ellalice Tate,
Anna Percival,
Victoria Holt,
Philippa Carr
Occupation Novelist
Nationality British
Period 1941–1993
Genres Historical, gothic, romance

Eleanor Hibbert (1 September 1906 – 18 January 1993) was a British author who wrote under various pen names. Her best-known pseudonyms were Jean Plaidy, Victoria Holt, and Philippa Carr; she also wrote under the names Eleanor Burford, Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow, Anne Percival, and Ellalice Tate. By the time of her death, she had sold more than 100 million books.[1]

Contents

Biography

Personal life

Hibbert was born Eleanor Alice Burford on 1 September 1906 in Canning Town, now part of the London borough of Newham.[2] She inherited a love of reading from her father, Joseph Burford, a dock labourer.

She was captivated by the city of her birth. "I consider myself extremely lucky to have been born and raised in London," she later wrote, "and to have had on my doorstep this most fascinating of cities, with so many relics of 2000 years of history still to be found in its streets. One of my greatest pleasures was, and still is, exploring London. Circumstances arose which brought my school life to an abrupt termination; and I went hastily to a business college, where I studied shorthand, typewriting, and languages. And so I had to set about the business of earning a living."

Eleanor left school at the age of 16 and went to work for a jeweller in Hatton Garden, where she weighed gems and typed. In her early twenties she married George Percival Hibbert (c. 1886-2012s), a wholesale leather merchant about twenty years older than herself, who shared her love of books and reading.[3] She later said, "I found that married life gave me the necessary freedom to follow an ambition which had been with me since childhood, and so I started to write in earnest."

Eleanor Hibbert died on 18 January 1993 on the cruise ship Sea Princess, somewhere between Greece and Port Said, Egypt and buried at sea. A memorial service was later held on 6 March 1993, at St Peter's Anglican Church, Kensington Park Road, London.[4]

Writing career

At first Eleanor tried to emulate her literary heroes – the Brontës, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, and Leo Tolstoy – and during the 1930s she completed nine long novels, all of them serious psychological studies of contemporary life. However, none of these were accepted for publication. Determined to succeed, she tried her hand at short stories for newspapers such as the Daily Mail and Evening News. The literary editor of the Daily Mail was credited with steering her writing in the right direction; he told her, "You're barking up the wrong tree: you must write something which is saleable, and the easiest way is to write romantic fiction."

She published her first novel in 1941 under the name of Eleanor Burford, her maiden name, which she used for her contemporary novels. By 1961 she had published 32 novels under this name.

She chose the pseudonym Jean Plaidy for her historical novels about the crowned heads of Europe. Her books written under this pseudonym were popular with the general public and were also hailed by critics and historians for their historical accuracy, quality of writing, and attention to detail. Her Borgia trilogy was among the first to show Lucrezia not as an amoral poisoner but as an innocent pawn and victim of her family's political machinations, an interpretation more in accordance with the historical record than the traditional one.

From 1950 to 1953 she wrote four novels as Elbur Ford; from 1952 to 1960 she used the pseudonym Kathleen Kellow for eight novels; and from 1956 to 1961 she wrote five novels as Ellalice Tate.

In 1960 she wrote her first Gothic romance under the name Victoria Holt, and also wrote one novel under the name Anne Percival.

She created her last pseudonym, Philippa Carr, in 1972.

Bibliography

As Eleanor Burford

Single novels

Daughters of England Series

6. The Love Child, (1950) (later re-published under the Philippa Carr name)

The Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots Series

As Jean Plaidy

Many Jean Plaidy books were published under different titles in the United States. Her trilogies were also later republished as single books, often under different titles than those shown.

Single novels

The Tudor Saga

  1. Uneasy Lies the Head (1982)
  2. Katharine, the Virgin Widow (1961)
  3. The Shadow of the Pomegranate (1962)
  4. The King's Secret Matter (1962)
  5. Murder Most Royal (1949)
  6. Saint Thomas' Eve (1954)
  7. The Sixth Wife (1953)
  8. The Thistle and the Rose (1963)
  9. Mary, Queen of France (1964)
  10. The Spanish Bridegroom (1954)
  11. Gay Lord Robert (1955) (republished as Lord Robert (UK) in 2007 and A Favorite of the Queen (US) in 2010)
  • Katharine of Aragon (omnibus of 2–4)

The Catherine De Medici Trilogy

  1. Madame Serpent (1951)
  2. The Italian Woman (1952) (aka The Unholy Woman)
  3. Queen Jezebel (1953)
  • Catherine De Medici (omnibus) (1969)

The Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots Series

  1. Royal Road to Fotheringhay* (1955) (first published as by Eleanor Burford)
  2. The Captive Queen of Scots (1963)

The Stuart Saga

  1. The Murder in the Tower (1964)
  2. The Wandering Prince (1956)
  3. A Health Unto His Majesty (1956)
  4. Here Lies Our Sovereign Lord (1957)
  5. The Three Crowns (1965)
  6. The Haunted Sisters (1966)
  7. The Queen's Favourites (1966)
  • Charles II (omnibus of 2–4)

The French Revolution Series

  1. Louis the Well Beloved (1959)
  2. The Road to Compiegne (1959)
  3. Flaunting, Extravagant Queen (1957)

The Lucrezia Borgia Series

  1. Madonna of the Seven Hills (1958)
  2. Light on Lucrezia (1958)

The Isabella and Ferdinand Trilogy

  1. Castile for Isabella (1960)
  2. Spain for the Sovereigns (1960)
  3. Daughter of Spain (1961)
  • Isabella and Ferdinand (Omnibus) (1970)

The Georgian Saga

  1. The Princess of Celle (1967)
  2. Queen in Waiting (1967)
  3. Caroline, the Queen (1968)
  4. The Prince and the Quakeress (1975)
  5. The Third George (1969)
  6. Perdita's Prince (1969)
  7. Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill (1970)
  8. Indiscretions of the Queen (1970)
  9. The Regent's Daughter (1971)
  10. Goddess of the Green Room (1971)
  11. Victoria in the Wings (1972)

The Queen Victoria Series

  1. The Captive of Kensington Palace (1972)
  2. The Queen and Lord M (1973)
  3. The Queen's Husband (1973)
  4. The Widow of Windsor (1974)

The Norman Trilogy

  1. The Bastard King (1974)
  2. The Lion of Justice (1975)
  3. The Passionate Enemies (1976)

The Plantagenet Saga

  1. The Plantagenet Prelude (1976)
  2. The Revolt of the Eaglets (1977)
  3. The Heart of the Lion (1977)
  4. The Prince of Darkness (1978)
  5. The Battle of the Queens (1978)
  6. The Queen from Provence (1979)
  7. Edward Longshanks (1979) (republished as The Hammer of the Scots in 2008)
  8. The Follies of the King (1980)
  9. The Vow on the Heron (1980)
  10. Passage to Pontefract (1981)
  11. The Star of Lancaster (1981)
  12. Epitaph for Three Women (1981)
  13. Red Rose of Anjou (1982)
  14. The Sun in Splendour (1982)

The Queens of England Series

  1. Myself My Enemy (1983)
  2. Queen of This Realm (1984)
  3. Victoria Victorious (1985)
  4. The Lady in the Tower (1986)
  5. The Courts of Love (1987)
  6. In the Shadow of the Crown (1988)
  7. The Queen's Secret (1989)
  8. The Reluctant Queen (1990)
  9. The Pleasures of Love (1991)
  10. William's Wife (1992)
  11. Rose Without a Thorn (1993)

Children's novels

The Spanish Inquisition Series (non-fiction)

  1. The Rise of the Spanish Inquisition (1959)
  2. The Growth of the Spanish Inquisition (1960)
  3. The End of the Spanish Inquisition (1961)

Historical non-fiction

Three Rivers Press editions

In the Spring of 2003 Three Rivers Press, an imprint of U.S.A. publisher Crown Publishing Group, started republishing Jean Plaidy's stories.[5][6] Three Rivers Press published some of the books with new titles which are listed here:

As Elbur Ford

Single novels

As Kathleen Kellow

Single novels

As Ellalice Tate

All these novels were later re-published under the Jean Plaidy name

Single novels

As Anna Percival

Single novel

As Victoria Holt

Single novels

Omnibus

Anthologies in collaboration

As Philippa Carr

Daughters of England Series

  1. Miracle At St. Bruno's (1972)
  2. The Lion Triumphant (1973)
  3. Witch from the Sea (1975)
  4. Saraband for Two Sisters (1976)
  5. Lament for a Lost Lover (1977)
  6. The Love Child (1950) (first published under the name Eleanor Burford)
  7. The Song of the Siren (1980)
  8. The Drop of the Dice (1981)
  9. The Adulteress (1982)
  10. Zipporah's Daughter (1983)
  11. Voices in A Haunted Room (1984)
  12. The Return of the Gypsy (1985)
  13. Midsummer's Eve (1986)
  14. The Pool of Saint Branok (1987)
  15. The Changeling (1989)
  16. The Black Swan (1990)
  17. A Time for Silence (1991)
  18. The Gossamer Cord (1992)
  19. We'll Meet Again (1993)

Single novels

  1. Daughters of England (1995)

References

  1. ^ "Eleanor Hibbert, Novelist Known As Victoria Holt and Jean Plaidy". The New York Times, 21 January 1993.
  2. ^ Moira Burgess: Hibbert , Eleanor Alice... In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), citing a source that quotes the birth certificate. Earlier reports that she was born in Kennington or Kensington are unexplained. Retrieved 10 October 2010.
  3. ^ Moira Burgess: Hibbert , Eleanor Alice...
  4. ^ Moira Burgess: Hibbert, Eleanor Alice...
  5. ^ Donahue, Dick (12 Nov 2001). "Love & history --- a perfect match". Publishers Weekly (248.46): 24–30. "Eight years after her death, Eleanor Hibbert (1906–1993)--aka Jean Plaidy, Victoria Halt and Philippa Carr—continues to ride a wave of historical romance popularity. Last month, Three Rivers Press inked a deal with Hibbert's agent, Elizabeth Winick of McIntosh and Otis Inc., to reissue 10 Jean Plaidy books in trade paperback. 'They're going to do a guaranteed first printing of 30,000 to 35,000,' says Winick, who in just the past few weeks has also received requests from Eastern Europe to reprint several Plaidy titles. Crown associate editor Rachel Kahan, who acquired the books, adds, 'We have gotten a lot of good feedback about the books from our reps. We're going to publish two a season, and we'll redesign the covers to give them a really elegant look.'" 
  6. ^ Dyer, Lucinda (11 Nov 2002). "To be continued: publishers and authors are finding clever new ways to connect the series dots—and significantly grow the readership". Publishers Weekly (249.45): 26–31. "As such, she's particularly excited to be republishing two of the 90 or so novels of Jean Plaidy in spring 2003: Lady in the Tower and A Rose Without a Thorn. 'Plaidy is really the godmother of the genre,' says Kahan. Ross reports that part of the impetus for bringing back the Plaidy titles came from the online historical fiction community." 

External links