![]() ![]() Winsor signed copies of Forever Amber from Boston to Atlanta donning chic attire, and glamorous shots of the author accompanied her book’s promotional materials. The novel was published by Macmillan in 1944, and her publishers sent Winsor on a 10-day promotion tour that was “almost unprecedented for a first-book author,” according to LIFE magazine. Once she began writing, she tracked her time, logging almost 5,000 hours to write five drafts. She claimed to have read 356 books on the Restoration Period before working on Forever Amber. ![]() When she was 19 years old, she married her college sweetheart Robert Herwig, and his senior thesis on Charles II put Winsor in the vicinity of literature on the king and his tumultuous period that included the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London. ![]() Winsor had never written a novel before setting out to pen a sprawling story of Restoration London. Kathleen Winsor, the author of the first bodice-ripper, Forever Amber, became a fast celebrity, and her book’s sales climbed even higher after states began banning it. It came in the form of a steamy historical novel north of 900 pages and packed with promiscuity. In the midst of the second World War, American housewives - and likely their husbands - found a titillating distraction from the distressing news of combat overseas. ![]()
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