By the time of her death, she sold 56 millon copies as Victoria Holt, 14 as Jean Plaidy and, 3 as Phillipa Carr. She died on Januat sea, somewhere between Greece and Port Said, Egypt. (Some of her novels were reedited as different pseudonyms). In 1972, she created her last pseudonym Philippa Carr. In 1960, she created the pseudonyms: Anna Percival and the popular Victoria Holt. In the 1950's she used the pseudonyms: Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow and Ellalice Tate. In 1941, she began signing her novels with her maiden name: Eleanor Burford, later she created her first and most prolific pseudonym: Jean Plaidy. She used eight pennames during her career and many of her readers under one penname never suspected her other identities. Eleanor Burford was one of the preeminent English authors of historical fiction for most of the twentieth century. She married ta leather merchant, George Percival Hibber, who shared her love of books and reading. Readers who enjoy easily accessible historical fiction, however, will find Eleanor's story adequately told.Eleanor Alice Burford was born on 1 September 1906 in Kensington, London, England. Plaidy's prose style is serviceable at best, lacking in grace and nuance.

Even then, Eleanor remains central to the tumultuous epoch that witnessed the murder of Thomas a Becket and other royal infamies. On the promise of a dowry fit for a king, Catherine has left her true love in Italy, forced into trading her future for a stake in the French crown. Later, ambitious, headstrong Eleanor locks wills with Henry, leading to her imprisonment for many years. Sullen-eyed and broken-hearted, fourteen-year-old Catherine de'Medici arrives in Marseilles to marry Henry of Orleans, second son of the King of France. She further shocks by pursuing her attraction to unattractive Henry Plantagenet, lured as much by the English crown as by the mutual sensuality that produces her favorite son, the enigmatic Richard the Lionhearted. Raised with the Provencal languor of the courtly love tradition in her native Aquitaine, her beauty the toast of jongleurs, Eleanor relieves the tedium of her marriage to the pious French King Louis by daringly joining the Crusaders.

Despite a hobbling first-person narrative that tends to repetition, the novel is dramatic in the sweep of its background and in the vividly realized events of Eleanor's long life. Evoking the beautiful, tempestuous and sensual woman who divorced the King of France and married the King of England, Plaidy employs the ingratiating domestic details that are characteristic of her historical storytelling. This fifth volume in the Queens of England Series is devoted to Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Madame serpent by jean plaidy