Rosamunde Pilcher,

OBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(''née'' Scott; 22 September 1924 – 6 February 2019) was a British novelist, best known for her sweeping novels set in Cornwall. Her books have sold over 60 million copies worldwide. 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''.

Personal life

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. Just before her birth her father was posted in Burma, while her mother remained in England. She attended the School of St. Clare in

Penzance Penzance ( ; kw, Pennsans) is a town, civil parish and port in the Penwith district of Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is the most westerly major town in Cornwall and is about west-southwest of Plymouth and west-southwest of London. Situated ...

and

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before going on to Miss Kerr-Sanders' Secretarial College. She began writing when she was seven, and published her first short story when she was 18. From 1943 until 1946, Pilcher served with the Women's Royal Naval Service. On 7 December 1946, she married Graham Hope Pilcher, a war hero and

jute Jute is a long, soft, shiny bast fiber that can be spun into coarse, strong threads. It is produced from flowering plants in the genus ''Corchorus'', which is in the mallow family Malvaceae. The primary source of the fiber is ''Corchorus olit ...

industry executive who died in March 2009. They moved to

Dundee Dundee (; sco, Dundee; gd, Dùn Dè or ) is Scotland's fourth-largest city and the 51st-most-populous built-up area in the United Kingdom. The mid-year population estimate for 2016 was , giving Dundee a population density of 2,478/km2 or ...

, Scotland. They had two daughters and two sons. Her son,

Robin Pilcher Robin Pilcher (born 10 August 1950) is a British author, the eldest son of author Rosamunde Pilcher Rosamunde Pilcher, OBE (''née'' Scott; 22 September 1924 – 6 February 2019) was a British writer of romance novels, mainstream fiction, a ...

, is also a novelist. Pilcher died on 6 February 2019, at the age of 94, following a

stroke A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...

Writing career

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. The breakthrough in Pilcher's career came in 1987, when she wrote the family saga ''

The Shell Seekers ''The Shell Seekers'' is a 1987 novel by Rosamunde Pilcher. It became one of her most famous best-sellers. It was nominated by the British public in 2003 as one of the top 100 novels in the BBC's Big Read. In Germany the novel is called ''Die M ...

'', her fourteenth novel under her own name. 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." The novel describes the everyday details of what life during World War II was like for some of those who lived in Britain. ''The Shell Seekers'' sold around ten million copies and was translated into more than forty languages. It was adapted for the stage by Terence Brady and

Charlotte Bingham The Hon. Charlotte Bingham (born 29 June 1942) is an English novelist who has written over 30 mainly historical romance novels and has also written for many television programmes including '' Upstairs, Downstairs''; ''Play for Today''; and '' ...

. Pilcher was said to be among the highest-earning women in Britain by the mid-1990s. Her other major novels include ''September'' (1990), ''Coming Home'' (1995) and ''Winter Solstice'' (2000). ''Coming Home'' won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by Romantic Novelists' Association in 1996. 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". 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. Pilcher retired from writing in 2000. Two years later, in the

2002 New Year Honours New Years' Honours are announced on or around the date of the New Year in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The dates vary, both from year to year and from country to country. All are published in supplements to the London Ga ...

, she was appointed an

Officer of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(OBE) for services to literature.

TV adaptations

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 A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie or TV film/movie, is a feature-length film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a television network, in contrast to theatrical films made for ...

, 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. Pilcher was awarded the British Tourism Award in 2002 for the positive effect the books and the adaptations have had on Cornish tourism. Notable film locations include Prideaux Place, a 16th-century mansion near Padstow. *A television adaptation of ''The Shell Seekers'' (dir. Waris Hussein), starring Angela Lansbury, was made in 1989. *''September'' (dir. Colin Bucksey, 1996), starring Jacqueline Bisset, Michael York, Edward Fox, Jenny Agutter and Mariel Hemingway *A two-part television adaptation of ''Coming Home'' (dir. Giles Foster), made by Yorkshire Television, was broadcast in 1998, starring Keira Knightley, Emily Mortimer,

Peter O'Toole Peter Seamus O'Toole (; 2 August 1932 – 14 December 2013) was a British stage and film actor. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began working in the theatre, gaining recognition as a Shakespearean actor at the Bristol Old Vic ...

, Joanna Lumley, Penelope Keith, David McCallum, Paul Bettany, Patrick Ryecart and Susan Hampshire, among others. *'' Nancherrow'' (dir. Simon Langton, 1999), starring Joanna Lumley,

Patrick Macnee Daniel Patrick Macnee (6 February 1922 – 25 June 2015) was a British film and television actor. After serving in the Royal Navy during World War II, he began his acting career in Canada. Despite having some small film roles, Macnee spent much ...

and Senta Berger *''Winter Solstice'' (dir. Martyn Friend, 2003), starring Sinéad Cusack,

Peter Ustinov Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov (born Peter Alexander Freiherr von Ustinov ; 16 April 192128 March 2004) was a British actor, filmmaker and writer. An internationally known raconteur, he was a fixture on television talk shows and lecture circuits ...

Jean Simmons Jean Merilyn Simmons, (31 January 1929 – 22 January 2010) was a British actress and singer. One of J. Arthur Rank's "well-spoken young starlets", she appeared predominantly in films, beginning with those made in Great Britain during and afte ...

and Geraldine Chaplin *''

Summer Solstice The summer solstice, also called the estival solstice or midsummer, occurs when one of Earth's poles has its maximum tilt toward the Sun. It happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere ( Northern and Southern). For that hemisphere, the summer ...

'' (dir. Giles Foster, 2005), starring Jacqueline Bisset, Honor Blackman and Franco Nero *''

'' (dir. Piers Haggard, 2006), starring Vanessa Redgrave and

Maximilian Schell Maximilian Schell (8 December 1930 – 1 February 2014) was an Austrian-born Swiss actor, who also wrote, directed and produced some of his own films. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1961 American film ''Judgment at Nuremberg'', h ...

*''Four Seasons'' (dir. Giles Foster, 2008), starring Tom Conti, Senta Berger, Michael York, Franco Nero, Juliet Mills and Frank Finlay *''Rosamunde Pilcher's Shades of Love'' (dir. Giles Foster, 2010), starring Charles Dance *''The Other Wife'' (dir. Giles Foster, 2012), starring Rupert Everett *' (dir. Giles Foster, 2014), starring Greg Wise, James Fox, Jane Seymour and Julian Sands *''Valentine's Kiss'' (dir. Sarah Harding, 2015), starring Rupert Graves and John Hannah

Partial bibliography

Novels

As Jane Fraser

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

As Rosamunde Pilcher

*''A Secret to Tell'' (1955) *''On My Own'' (1965) *''Sleeping Tiger'' (1967) *''Another View'' (1969) *''The End of Summer'' (1971) *''Snow in April'' (1972) *''The Empty House'' (1973) *''The Day of the Storm'' (1975) *''Under Gemini'' (1977) *''Wild Mountain Thyme'' (1979) *''The Carousel'' (1982) *''Voices in Summer'' (1984) *''

'' (1987) *'' September'' (1990) *''Coming Home'' (1995) *''Winter Solstice'' (2000)

Short-story collections

*'' The Blue Bedroom and Other Stories'' (1985) *''Flowers in the Rain: And Other Stories'' (1991) *''The Key'' (1996) *''A Place Like Home'' (2021)

Non-fiction

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

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Pilcher, Rosamunde 1924 births 2019 deaths British romantic fiction writers People from Lelant Officers of the Order of the British Empire Novelists from Cornwall 20th-century English novelists 20th-century English women writers Women romantic fiction writers English women novelists Women's Royal Naval Service officers