Shell Seekers (Pilcher)

Author Bio 
• Aka—Jane Fraser
• Birth—September 22, 1924
• Where—Lelant, Cornwall, England, UK
• Education—Miss Kerr-Sanders Secretarial College
• Currently—Invergowrie by Dundee, Scotland, UK

Prior to the phenomenal success of The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a novelist and short-story writer, but it was with this novel that she found herself embraced by readers around the globe. She is now internationally recognized as one of the most-loved storytellers of our time and has gone on to write the celebrated bestselling novels Coming Home and September. She lives with her husband Graham and their dog Daisy in Perthshire, Scotland. (From the publisher.)

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Rosamunde Pilcher was born in Lelant, Cornwall on September 22, 1924. She attended St. Clare's Polwithen and Howell's School Llandaff before going on to Miss Kerr-Sanders' Secretarial College. She began writing for herself when she was seven, and published her first short story when she was only 18.

From 1943 through 1946, Pilcher served with the Women's Naval Service. On December 7, 1946 she married Graham Hope Pilcher. They moved to Dundee, Scotland, where she still lives today. Besides being a housewife and mother of four children, she wrote short stories and love stories for women's magazines at her kitchen table using the pen name Jane Fraser.

In 1949, Pilcher's first book, a romance novel, was published by Mills and Boon, under the pseudonym Jane Fraser. She published an additional 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.

At the beginning writing was a refuge from her daily life. She claims that writing saved her marriage. The real breakthrough in Pilcher's career came in 1987, when she wrote the family saga, The Shell Seekers. Since then her books have made her one of the more successful contemporary female authors.

One of her most famous works, The Shell Seekers, focusses on Penelope Stern Keeling, an elderly British woman 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 more than five million copies worldwide and was adapted for the stage by Terence Brady and Charlotte Bingham.

Extras
• Her books are especially popular in Germany due to the fact that the national TV station ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen) has produced more than 70 of her stories for TV. These TV films are some of the most popular programmes on ZDF. Both Pilcher and ZDF programme director Dr. Claus Beling were awarded the British Tourism Award in 2002 for the positive effect the books and the TV versions had on tourism.

• Pilcher retired from writing in 2000. Two years later she was created an Officer of the British Empire (OBE)

• She has four children and fourteen grandchildren. Her son, Robin Pilcher, is also a novelist. (Bio from Wikipedia.)

For more information visit the author's website.