简·普莱蒂

埃莉诺·艾丽斯·伯福德（Eleanor Alice Burford，1906年9月1日—1993年1月18日）是一位英国历史浪漫小说作家，她的历史小说以虚构的欧洲皇室、西班牙宗教裁判所为背景。她还创作了爱情小说、犯罪小说、悬疑小说和惊悚小说。她一生共写了200多本书。她曾使用多个笔名创作了大量作品，其中包括以维多莉亚·荷特（Victoria Holt）之名创作的哥德小说。

她在去世前，坐上了一艘往返于雅典和塞得港之间的游轮。1993年1月18日，她在游轮上去世，并被海葬。

Eleanor Alice Hibbert (née Burford; 1 September 1906 – 18 January 1993) was an English writer of historical romances. 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 and the three volumes of her history of the Spanish Inquisition, Victoria Holt for gothic romances, and Philippa Carr for a multi-generational family saga. She also wrote light romances, crime novels, murder mysteries and thrillers under pseudonyms Eleanor Burford, Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow, Anna Percival, and Ellalice Tate.

In 1989, the Romance Writers of America gave her the Golden Treasure award in recognition of her contributions to the romance genre. 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. She continues to be a widely borrowed author among British libraries.

Personal life

Hibbert was born Eleanor Alice Burford on 1 September 1906 at 20 Burke Street, Canning Town, now part of the London borough of Newham. She inherited a love of reading from her father, Joseph Burford, a dock labourer. Her mother was Alice Louise Burford, née Tate.

When she was quite young, ailing health forced her to be privately educated at home. At the age of 16 she went to a business college, where she studied shorthand, typewriting, and languages. She then worked for a jeweller in Hatton Garden where she weighed gems and typed. She also worked as a language interpreter in a café for French and German-speaking tourists.

In her early twenties, she married George Percival Hibbert (c. 1886–1966), a wholesale leather merchant about twenty years older than herself, who shared her love of books and reading. She was his second wife. During World War II, the Hibberts lived in a cottage in Cornwall that looked out over a bay called Plaidy Beach.

Between 1974 and 1978, 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. The house had carved fireplaces and a staircase from the Tudor period. Hibbert restored the house and furnished it opulently but soon found it too big for her taste and too far from London.

She then moved to a two-storey penthouse apartment at Albert Court, Kensington Gore, London, that overlooked the Royal Albert Hall and Hyde Park. She shared her apartment with Mrs. Molly Pascoe, a companion who also travelled with her.

In 1985, Hibbert sold King's Lodging.

Hibbert spent her summers in her cottage near Plaidy Beach in Cornwall. To get away from the cold English winter, Hibbert would sail around the world on board a cruise ship three months a year from January to April. The cruise would take her to exotic destinations like Egypt and Australia, locations that she later incorporated into her novels. She sailed to Sydney aboard the cruise ship Oronsay in 1970, and the Canberra in 1978.

Towards the end of her life, her eyesight started failing.

Eleanor Hibbert died on 18 January 1993 on the cruise ship Sea Princess somewhere between Athens, Greece and Port Said, Egypt, and was buried at sea. A memorial service was later held on 6 March 1993, at St Peter's Anglican Church, Kensington Park Road, London.

Writing career

Literary influences

Eleanor Hibbert grew up in London. She first discovered her fascination for the past when she visited Hampton Court in her teenage years. After her marriage, Hibbert achieved the financial independence she needed to realise her desire to write. London's monuments and royal personalities filled Hibbert's historical novels. She was also influenced by her regular visits to British historic homes and their architecture.

During World War II, the Hibberts lived in Cornwall, whose pebble beaches, high cliffs and treacherous blue waters served as the setting for many of the Victoria Holt gothic novels.