Barbara Cartland, `Queen of Romance' is dead

Barbara Cartland, `Queen of Romance' is dead
ANJALI MODY

LONDON, MAY 21: Barbara Cartland, prolific writer of kitsch romance novels has died just two months short of her 99th birthday. Dame Barbara died in her sleep after a short illness, a spokeswoman said.

Most often photographed wearing pink chiffon and pearls and sporting long, fake eyelashes, Cartland was one of the last of her generation -- a writer whose success was measured by the number of books she wrote and sold rather than by any pretensions to literary merit. On average, the `Queen of Romance' wrote one novel every fortnight, dictating to a secretary. At the height of her success she was writing 23 novels a year and became the world's most prolific novelist and author, totalling over 700 books -- more than any other living writer.

She sold more than a billion copies world-wide in 36 languages, finding herself a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the best selling living author in the world. She was a particular hit in Russia and France where she was awarded the Parisian Gold Medal ``for services to romance''. Cartland, however, also penned a series on etiquette, primers on love and romance and material for a correspondence course on writing romantic fiction.

She always held the unwavering view that sex before marriage -- at least for women -- was unacceptable. Her novels, with titles like Love Light of Apollo, A Virgin in Mayfair, Cupid Rides Pillion and Stars in My Heart, featured virginal maidens whose desires were unspoken and to whom even a kiss seemed daring. A standard Barbara Cartland novel revolved around an innocent, week-kneed woman of considerable beauty being swept of her feet by a masterful and, most often, titled man. Needless to say, her heroines always lived happily ever after.

Barbara was born the daughter of Army officer Bertram Cartland, and Mary Hamilton Scobell. Her father died in the First World War while her brothers Ronald and Anthony both died at Dunkirk in the Second World War.

Cartland's literary career began at 19 when she wrote a society gossip column for the Daily Express. She followed it up with her first novel, Jig-saw, two years later in 1923.

Cartland was married twice, to cousins Alexander and Hugh McCorquodale , and had three children. Her daughter by her first marriage, Raine, later became Princess Diana's step-mother.

Apart from espousing vitamins as the route to good health, Dame Barbara also believed that ``an Englishman should always be a gentleman, the Church should take a lead on matters of morals and young people should be brought up in a happy family environment where the wife does not go out to work'', the spokeswoman said.