Hibbert restored the house and furnished it opulently but soon found it too big for her taste and too far from London. The house had carved fireplaces and a staircase from the Tudor period. During World War II, the Hibberts lived in a cottage in Cornwall that looked out over a bay called Plaidy Beach.īetween 19, Eleanor Hibbert bought a 13th-century manor house in Sandwich, Kent that she named King's Lodging because she believed that it had served previously as lodging for English monarchs Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. 1886–1966), a wholesale leather merchant about twenty years older than herself, who shared her love of books and reading. In her early twenties she married George Percival Hibbert ( c. She also worked as a language interpreter in a café for French and German-speaking tourists. She then worked for a jeweller in Hatton Garden, where she weighed gems and typed.

At the age of 16 she went to a business college, where she studied shorthand, typewriting, and languages. When she was quite young, her health forced her to be privately educated at home. Her mother was Alice Louise Burford, née Tate. She inherited a love of reading from her father, Joseph Burford, a dock labourer. Hibbert was born Eleanor Alice Burford on 1 September 1906 at 20 Burke Street, Canning Town, now part of the London borough of Newham. (The ship is seen here in 1986 at Venice). Personal life Įleanor Hibbert died aboard the cruise ship Sea Princess in 1993. She continues to be a widely borrowed author among British libraries. By the time of her death, she had written more than 200 books that sold more than 100 million copies and had been translated into 20 languages. In 1989, the Romance Writers of America gave her the Golden Treasure award in recognition of her contributions to the romance genre. She also wrote light romances, crime novels, murder mysteries and thrillers under pseudonyms Eleanor Burford, Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow, Anna Percival, and Ellalice Tate. She was a prolific writer who published several books a year in different literary genres, each genre under a different pen name: Jean Plaidy for fictionalized history of European royalty, Victoria Holt for gothic romances, and Philippa Carr for a multi-generational family saga.

Eleanor Alice Hibbert ( née Burford 1 September 1906 – 18 January 1993) was an English writer of historical romances.

The Road to Compiegne by Jean Plaidy