Eleanor Burford books in order

Eleanor Burford was the maiden name and first pen name of Eleanor Hibbert (1906-1993), the English novelist who sold more than 100 million books as Victoria Holt, Jean Plaidy and Philippa Carr.

Eleanor Alice Burford was born in London on 1 September 1906 and died on 18 January 1993 aboard a cruise ship between Athens and Port Said; she was buried at sea. She married George Percival Hibbert, a wholesale leather merchant some twenty years older than her. Her first novel, Daughter of Anna (1941), was published as Eleanor Burford, a name she used for light romances until 1962, latterly for Mills & Boon. During the Second World War the Hibberts lived in Looe, Cornwall, overlooking Plaidy beach, which gave her the Jean Plaidy name she used from 1945 for historical novels about European royalty.

In 1960, at the suggestion of her agent, she wrote Mistress of Mellyn as Victoria Holt. Published by Doubleday in the US and Collins in the UK, it became an international best seller and revived the Gothic romantic suspense novel. Thirty-one more Holt novels followed, including Kirkland Revels (1962), The Legend of the Seventh Virgin (1965), The King of the Castle (1967), The Shivering Sands (1969), The Secret Woman (1970), The House of a Thousand Lanterns (1974) and The Demon Lover (1982). As Philippa Carr, from 1972, she wrote family sagas, and she also published as Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow, Ellalice Tate and Anna Percival. In all she wrote more than 200 books.

For collectors. Mistress of Mellyn (1960), the title that launched the Victoria Holt name, was published by Doubleday in New York and by Collins in London, so compare both when identifying a true first. Her early Eleanor Burford romances, beginning with Daughter of Anna (1941), predate all of her better-known pen names.