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Dame Barbara Cartland, DBE, CStJ (9 July 1901 – 21 May 2000), born Mary Barbara Hamilton, was an English author of romance novels, who was one of the best-selling authors as well as one of the most prolific and commercially successful of the twentieth century. Her 723 novels were translated into 36 different languages, and she continues to be referenced in the ''Guinness World Records'' for the most novels published in a single year in 1976. As Barbara Cartland she is known for her numerous romantic novels, but she also wrote under her married name of Barbara McCorquodale.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/archives-cc/app/details.php?id=7540 )〕 She wrote more than 700 books,〔 as well as plays, music, verse, drama, magazine articles and operetta, and was a prominent philanthropist. She reportedly sold more than 750 million copies.〔 Other sources estimate her book sales at more than two billion copies. She specialised in 19th-century Victorian era pure romance. Her novels all featured portrait-style artwork, particularly the cover art. As head of Cartland Promotions, she also became one of London's most prominent society figures and one of Britain's most popular media personalities, right up until her death in 2000. ==Early life== Born Mary Barbara Hamilton Cartland at 31 Augustus Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, England. She was the only daughter and eldest child of a British army officer, Major Bertram Cartland〔(CWGC :: Casualty Details )〕 (born James Bertram Falkner Cartland 1876; died 27 May 1918), and his wife, Mary Hamilton Scobell, known as "Polly" (1877–1976). Though she was born into an enviable degree of middle-class comfort, the family's security was severely shaken after the suicide of her paternal grandfather, James Cartland, a financier, who shot himself in the wake of bankruptcy.〔 According to the entry in the probate registry he left £92,000, little evidence of bankruptcy. This was followed soon after by her father's death on a Flanders battlefield in World War I. However, her enterprising mother opened a London dress shop to make ends meet and to raise Cartland and her two brothers, Anthony and Ronald, both of whom were eventually killed in battle in 1940.〔 After attending The Alice Ottley School, Malvern Girls' College, and Abbey House, an educational institution in Hampshire, Cartland soon became successful as a society reporter and writer of romantic fiction. Cartland admitted she was inspired in her early work by the novels of Edwardian author Elinor Glyn, whom she idolized and eventually befriended. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Barbara Cartland」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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