Best-Selling Novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford Dies

Best-selling novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford has died at age 91 after decades of writing about "bold heroines," reports the Washington Post. The British native died Sunday in her New York City home after a short bout of cancer. Highlights of her career:

• Her debut novel A Woman of Substance became a smash hit in 1979, when Bradford was in her 40s, per the AP. The rags-to-riches book—with main character Emma Harte, a retail baron—has sold more than 30 million copies and was made into a 1984 miniseries.

• Bradford went on to write more than 30 best-sellers that have sold more than 90 million copies in 40 different languages, amassing a fortune estimated at $300 million along the way. The Guardian notes that she published her 40th novel last year.
• The New York Times calls her "one of the world's best-selling romance writers," though Bradford might recoil at that. The Post notes that she eschewed being pigeonholed as a romance writer, with her books focused on "women who knew what they wanted in life—not unlike Mrs. Bradford." Many of the novels were multi-generational family sagas.
• "My mother was a striver. I'm a striver. I write about people who strive," she once said. "To be content with one's lot, especially if it is a lowly lot, is rather lazy."

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