Author Barbara Taylor Bradford: From Typing Pool to Park Avenue

From The Wall Street Journal:

Barbara Taylor Bradford, 84, is the author of 36 novels, including “A Woman of Substance.” 

. . . .

I saw my name in print for the first time when I was 10. My mother sent one of the little stories I had been writing to the Children’s Magazine in London.

Six weeks passed when an envelope addressed to me arrived. I opened it and something fell out. The letter was from the editor, who liked the story—“The Girl Who Wanted a Pony”— and wanted to publish it. On the floor was a postal order for $25 in today’s dollars. From that moment on, I wanted to be a writer.

. . . .

During the Blitz in 1940 and ’41, we spent nights in an air-raid shelter at the bottom of our garden. My father, Winston, had an artificial leg, so he had an odd step.

Some evenings, he’d spend time in the pub with his mates. By the time he came home, my mother, Freda, and I were in the shelter waiting for him. I’d listen for his uneven step.

Inside our house, there was a tiny sitting room off the kitchen that had a small antique desk and chair. That’s where I wrote. After my first story was published, my father bought me a typewriter.

. . . .

Growing up, I didn’t think of writing as glamorous. I just had a compulsion to sit down and tell stories. At 15, I left school, which was fairly common then. College wasn’t considered a necessity.

I wanted to be a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post, so I went off to private school to learn shorthand and typing. Women then always started in the typing pool, and that was true of me.

One of my responsibilities was to type up copy dictated to me over the phone by reporters in the field. I soon grew accustomed to the writing style for publication.

A female reporter at another newspaper befriended me and took me out on assignments. One day I told her about this strange woman who lived near my parents. She looked poverty-stricken, and people called her a witch. She also happened to be the sister of one of the richest men in Leeds.

 The reporter suggested I write a story about her. I did and dropped it off on the sub-editor’s desk. It ran in the paper. The editor was impressed. He said, “So, you want to be a journalist?” I said, “I don’t want to be, sir, I’m going to be.”

He eventually put me in the reporter’s room. I was 16.

. . . .

Robert Bradford took me to lunch and we fell in love. We were married on Christmas Eve in 1963, and I joined Bob in America. I soon began writing for several magazines in the States.

During the 1970s, when I was in my 30s, I decided to write a novel. I started four of them but stopped. Then at 39, I wrote my first, “A Woman of Substance.” It was published in 1979.

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal

Here’s a link to A Woman of Substance.