Barbara Cartland

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Barbara Cartland in 1987
Barbara Cartland in 2000, with reporter Randy Bryan Bigham

Dame Mary Barbara Hamilton Cartland (born July 9, 1901 in Edgbaston , Birmingham , England , † May 21, 2000 in Camfield Place , Hatfield , Hertfordshire ) was an English author. Alongside Denise Robins , Cartland is considered the most important British writer of romance novels in the 20th century.

life and work

Mary Barbara Hamilton Cartland was the only daughter and eldest child of a British Army officer, Major Bertram (Bertie) Cartland, and his wife, Mary (Polly) Hamilton Scobell. Although she was born into a middle-class family, the family was badly shaken when her paternal grandfather, James Cartland, a financier, died of suicide in bankruptcy. In May 1918, her father died in Flanders during the First World War . Her mother opened a clothes shop in London to support the family, Barbara and her two brothers Ronald (* 1907) and Anthony (* 1913). Both brothers died on the battlefield near Dunkirk in World War II on May 29 and 30, 1940, respectively.

After attending Malvern Girls' College and Abbey House, an educational institution in Hampshire , Barbara became a successful journalist and gossip reporter. Her first novel, Jigsaw , was published in 1923.

From 1927 to 1932, Barbara Cartland was married to Alexander George McCorquodale, a former army officer. This was the heir to a great fortune that had been amassed with printing companies. McCorquodale died in 1964. Her daughter Raine (* 1929), Countess Spencer, was "Debutante of the Year" in 1947 and in 1976 the stepmother of Diana, Princess of Wales .

In 1936, after their divorce, which included lawsuits and counterclaims for infidelity, Cartland married a cousin of her first husband, Hugh McCorquodale (1898–1964). With her second husband, who was also a former military officer, Barbara Cartland had two sons, Ian (born October 11, 1937) and Glen (December 31, 1939).

Barbara Cartland's image as a self-proclaimed expert on romance earned her a lot of ridicule in later years, but her novels were hugely successful: she sold over a billion books. According to her own statement, Barbara Cartland had been the only person in the world for twenty years to complete a novel every two weeks. She painted the covers for her books herself. Her publishers estimate that she wrote a total of 724 titles. In 2004, 160 unpublished novels were discovered in her estate.

Film adaptations

  • 1987: Risk of love
  • 1989: Love at risk
  • 1990: A Phantom in Monte Carlo
  • 1991: duel of passions

literature

  • Tim Heald: Life of love. Barbara Cartland . Sinclair-Stevenson, London 1994, ISBN 1-85619-356-X .
  • Gwen Robyns: Barbara Cartland. To an authorized biography . Doubleday, Garden City, NY 1985, ISBN 0-385-19818-3

Movies

  • Christoph Weinert (script and direction): Born in 1900 . BRD, USA, GB 1999/2000 (75 min., First broadcast: August 2000 on ARTE). - In the film, the British author Barbara Cartland, the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer and the American theater director Martin Magner look back on a hundred years of life.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Cartland, Barbara
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cartland, Mary Barbara Hamilton (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British author of romantic literature
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Edgbaston , Birmingham , England
DATE OF DEATH May 21, 2000
Place of death Camfield Place , Hatfield , Hertfordshire