Eleanor Burford Hibbert, also known as Victoria Holt, was a British author born on September 1, 1906, in Kensington, London, England. She is recognized for her significant contribution to historical fiction, gothic fiction, and romance novels, having written over 200 books in her lifetime. Hibbert was an extremely prolific author who used several pseudonyms, including Jean Plaidy, Philippa Carr, Eleanor Burford, Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow, Anne Percival, and Ellalice Tate. She adopted these different names due to the varying subject matter of her books, each genre representing a distinct identity.
Hibbert's most famous pseudonyms include Jean Plaidy, under which she wrote historical novels about the regency, and Victoria Holt, which she used for gothic romance. Her works as Plaidy were highly praised for their accuracy and quality of writing. Some of her popular series include the Tudor Saga, Daughters of England, Stuart Saga, Georgian Saga, Plantagenet Saga, and Queens of England series. Hibbert's love for reading and writing was instilled in her by her father, Joseph Burford, a dock laborer. Despite her weak health in her youth, she received an education at home and later attended a business college, where she studied shorthand, typewriting, and languages. These skills enabled her to work in Hatton Garden as a jeweler and as a verbal communication interpreter in a café for German and French-speaking tourists.
In her early twenties, Hibbert married George Percival Hibbert, a wholesale leather merchant who was about 20 years older than her and shared her love for books. Hibbert published a significant number of books every year under different fictional genres, and her readers were often unaware of her other identities. By the time of her death in 1993, while on a cruise between Greece and Egypt, Hibbert had sold over 100 million copies of her books in 20 languages. She received the Golden Treasure award in 1989 from the Romance Writers of America in recognition of her significant contributions to the romance genre. Hibbert's popular works of historical fiction continue to be appreciated by readers and critics alike for their accuracy, quality of writing, and attention to detail.