Kathleen Winsor - famous as the author of the “bonk buster”
novel Forever Amber - was born in Minnesota in 1919. Her father was a real estate dealer and she
went to college….
She married young, to a football star, Robert Herwig, and during
her marriage to him, she worked as a sports reporter for a newspaper. Herwig was at college, and Kathleen, bored
one day, picked up one of his books about Restoration England. She became interested in the period, and began
to research it. Herwig was soon away at World
War 2, and during that time, Kathleen continued to read about Charles II’s
England... Reputedly, she read over 300
books on the era…though she had never travelled outside the USA.
She had always wanted to write, and during her husband’s absence,
she wrote several drafts of the novel Amber...
She was working on it, soon after the runaway success of
Gone with the Wind. Mitchell’s novel was
probably an inspiration.. it also had a historical background, was set during torrid
times of war and disaster and had a feisty independent glamorous heroine. Amber is much more scandalous than Scarlett O’Hara...and
rises from poverty to affluence and high status, mainly by the use of her physical
charms. She becomes eventually the mistress
of Charles II. Scarlett, on the other
hand, is never very sexual. She does fascinate men, and is willing to flirt to
get ahead, but never goes further than that.
She makes her way in the world through business smarts, willingness to
work hard even picking cotton, and being good with handling money…. Although she
does marry three times.
Amber is the illegitimate daughter of Royalist gentry, but
her parents had died and she was taken in by a decent but not very rich farming
family. Amber’s beauty attracts Bruce
Carlyon, a Royalist lord who is trying to rebuild his life after the Civil
Wars. He seduces her and takes her with
him to London, but he dislikes court life and wants to go adventuring abroad…
Amber, however, is fascinated by the world of the rich, and London. Some of the novel was clearly inspired by Moll
Flanders, by Defoe. Amber is left poor
when Bruce leaves her, and she marries a con man, to get a father for her
unborn baby… She ends up in jail, and
becomes a thief and the mistress of a thief…
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