Rosamunde Scott Pilcher | |
|---|---|
| Born | Rosamunde E. M. L. Scott[1] (1924-09-22)22 September 1924 Lelant,Cornwall, England |
| Died | 6 February 2019(2019-02-06) (aged 94) Longforgan, Scotland |
| Pen name | Jane Fraser |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Language | English |
| Period | 1949–2000 |
| Genre | Romance |
| Notable works | The Shell Seekers |
| Notable awards | RoNA Award |
| Spouse | Graham Hope Pilcher (1946–2009) |
| Children | 4, includingRobin Pilcher |
Rosamunde Pilcher,OBE (néeScott; 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 nameJane Fraser. In 2001, she received theCorine Literature Prize's Weltbild Readers' Prize forWinter Solstice.
She was born Rosamunde Scott on 22 September 1924 inLelant,Cornwall. Her parents were Helen (née Harvey) and Charles Scott, a British civil servant.[2] Just before her birth her father was posted inBurma, while her mother remained in England.[4] She attended the School of St. Clare inPenzance andHowell'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 theWomen's Royal Naval Service. On 7 December 1946, she married Graham Hope Pilcher,[5] a war hero andjute industry executive who died in March 2009.[7] They moved toDundee, 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 astroke.[10]
In 1949, Pilcher's first book, a romance novel, was published byMills 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 withSecret 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 sagaThe 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 duringWorld War II was like for some of those who lived inBritain.[6]The Shell Seekers sold around ten million copies and was translated into more than forty languages.[2] It was adapted for the stage byTerence Brady andCharlotte Bingham.[8] Pilcher was said to be among the highest-earning women in Britain by the mid-1990s.[11]
Her other major novels includeSeptember (1990),Coming Home (1995) andWinter Solstice (2000).[10][12]Coming Home won theRomantic Novel of the Year Award byRomantic Novelists' Association in 1996.[13] The president of the association in 2019, the romance writerKatie 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 forThe 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 the2002 New Year Honours, she was appointed anOfficer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to literature.[14][15]
Her books are especially popular in Germany because the national television stationZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen) has produced more than a hundred of her stories asTV movies, starting withThe 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 includePrideaux Place, a 16th-century mansion nearPadstow.[16]
