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Rosamunde Pilcher

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Rosamunde Pilcher, OBE (née Scott; 22 September 1924 – 6 February 2019)[2] was a British novelist, best known for her sweeping novels set in Cornwall. Her books have sold over 60 million copies worldwide.[3] Early in her career she was published under the pen name Jane Fraser. In 2001, she received the Corine Literature Prize's Weltbild Readers' Prize for Winter Solstice.

Rosamunde Scott Pilcher

OBE
BornRosamunde E. M. L. Scott[1]
(1924-09-22)22 September 1924
Lelant, Cornwall, England
Died6 February 2019(2019-02-06) (aged 94)
Longforgan, Scotland
Pen nameJane Fraser
OccupationNovelist
LanguageEnglish
Period1949–2000
GenreRomance
Notable worksThe Shell Seekers
Notable awardsRoNA Award
SpouseGraham Hope Pilcher (1946–2009)
Children4, including Robin Pilcher

Personal life

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She was born Rosamunde Scott on 22 September 1924 in Lelant, Cornwall. Her parents were Helen (née Harvey) and Charles Scott, a British civil servant.[2] Just before her birth her father was posted in Burma, while her mother remained in England.[4] She attended the School of St. Clare in Penzance and Howell's School Llandaff before going on to Miss Kerr-Sanders' Secretarial College.[5] She began writing when she was seven, and published her first short story when she was 18.[6]

From 1943 until 1946, Pilcher served with the Women's Royal Naval Service. On 7 December 1946, she married Graham Hope Pilcher,[5] a war hero and jute industry executive who died in March 2009.[7] They moved to Dundee, Scotland. They had two daughters and two sons.[8] Her son, Robin Pilcher, is also a novelist.[9]

Pilcher died on 6 February 2019, at the age of 94, following a stroke.[10]

Writing career

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In 1949, Pilcher's first book, a romance novel, was published by Mills and Boon, under the pseudonym Jane Fraser. She published a further ten novels under that name. In 1955, she also began writing under her real name with Secret to Tell. By 1965 she had dropped the pseudonym and was signing her own name to all of her novels.[5]

The breakthrough in Pilcher's career came in 1987, when she wrote the family saga The Shell Seekers, her fourteenth novel under her own name.[10] It focuses on an elderly British woman, Penelope Keeling, who relives her life in flashbacks, and on her relationship with her adult children. Keeling's life was not extraordinary, but it spans "a time of huge importance and change in the world."[6] The novel describes the everyday details of what life during World War II was like for some of those who lived in Britain.[6] The Shell Seekers sold around ten million copies and was translated into more than forty languages.[2] It was adapted for the stage by Terence Brady and Charlotte Bingham.[8] Pilcher was said to be among the highest-earning women in Britain by the mid-1990s.[11]

Her other major novels include September (1990), Coming Home (1995) and Winter Solstice (2000).[10][12] Coming Home won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by Romantic Novelists' Association in 1996.[13] The president of the association in 2019, the romance writer Katie Fforde, considers Pilcher to be "groundbreaking as she was the first to bring family sagas to the wider public".[10] Felicity Bryan, in her obituary for The Guardian, writes that Pilcher took the romance genre to "an altogether higher, wittier level"; she praises Pilcher's work for its "grittiness and fearless observation" and comments that it is often more prosaic than romantic.[2]

Pilcher retired from writing in 2000.[5] Two years later, in the 2002 New Year Honours, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to literature.[14][15]

TV adaptations

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Her books are especially popular in Germany because the national television station ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen) has produced more than a hundred of her stories as TV movies, starting with The Day of the Storm in 1993. A complete list can be found on the German Wikipedia: Rosamunde Pilcher (Filmreihe). These television films are some of the most popular programmes on ZDF.[11][16] Pilcher was awarded the British Tourism Award in 2002 for the positive effect the books and the adaptations have had on Cornish tourism.[11] Notable film locations include Prideaux Place, a 16th-century mansion near Padstow.[16]

Partial bibliography

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Novels

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As Jane Fraser

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  • Half-Way to the Moon (1949)[17]
  • The Brown Fields (1951)[17]
  • Dangerous Intruder (1951)[17]
  • Young Bar (1952)[17]
  • A Day Like Spring (1953)[17]
  • Dear Tom (1954)[17]
  • Bridge of Corvie (1956)[17]
  • A Family Affair (1958)[17]
  • A Long Way from Home (1963)[17]
  • The Keeper's House (1963)[17]

As Rosamunde Pilcher

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Short-story collections

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Non-fiction

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  • The World of Rosamunde Pilcher (1996) (autobiography)
  • Christmas with Rosamunde Pilcher (1997)

References

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  1. ^ England & Wales, Civil Registration Birth Index, 1916–2007
  2. ^ a b c d Bryan, Felicity (7 February 2019). "Rosamunde Pilcher obituary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 28 January 2023.
  3. ^ "Rosamunde Pilcher obituary". 7 February 2019. Retrieved 8 February 2019 – via www.thetimes.co.uk.
  4. ^ Vineta Colby (1995), World authors, 1985-1990, H.W. Wilson, p. 970
  5. ^ a b c d Bruns, Ann (11 August 2000). "Biography: Rosamunde Pilcher". Bookreporter.com. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
  6. ^ a b c Binchy, Maeve (7 February 1988). "War and Change Come to Temple Pudley". New York Times. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
  7. ^ "Army Obituaries: Graham Pilcher". The Daily Telegraph. 3 May 2009. Archived from the original on 19 August 2010. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
  8. ^ a b Butt, Riaza (25 February 2004). "Pilcher's winning formula". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
  9. ^ "Talking with Robin Pilcher". AudioFile. April–May 2004. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
  10. ^ a b c d Flood, Alison (7 February 2019). "Rosamunde Pilcher, author of The Shell Seekers, dies aged 94". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  11. ^ a b c d "Rosamunde Pilcher, author of The Shell Seekers, dies at 94". BBC. 7 February 2019. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  12. ^ a b c d e Musumeci, Robin (2010). "Pilcher, Rosamunde (1924– )". In Geoff Hamilton; Brian Jones (eds.). Encyclopedia of American Popular Fiction. Infobase Publishing. pp. 266–67. ISBN 9781438116945.
  13. ^ Romantic Novel of the Year, 12 July 2012
  14. ^ "Honours in the arts world". BBC News. 31 December 2001. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
  15. ^ HM Government (31 December 2001). "New Year's Honours List — United Kingdom". The London Gazette. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
  16. ^ a b Jakat, Lena (4 October 2013). "The Rosamunde Pilcher trail: why German tourists flock to Cornwall". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  17. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t The Writers Directory 1980–82. Springer/Macmillan. 2016 [1979]. p. 981. ISBN 9781349036509.
  18. ^ The carousel. WorldCat. OCLC 1012636559.
  19. ^ Voices in summer. WorldCat. OCLC 779036363.
  20. ^ The blue bedroom and other stories. WorldCat. OCLC 11623519.
  21. ^ Flowers in the rain & other stories. WorldCat. OCLC 23870309.
  22. ^ The key. WorldCat. OCLC 43225068.
  23. ^ "A Place Like Home". Macmillan Publishers. Retrieved 28 June 2021.
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