Rebecca Shaw (author)

Last updated

Rebecca Shaw
Born1931
Leeds, England
Died(2015-09-07)7 September 2015
Dorchester, Dorset
OccupationWriter, teacher of deaf children
Language English
Genre Fiction
Subject Country life
Partner Married
Children4
Website
rebeccashaw.me

Rebecca Shaw was the Sunday Times bestselling author of 27 novels published by Orion Publishing Group. She sold more than one million copies. [1] [2] Her books came in two series, Barleybridge and Turnham Malpas, and revolved around the loves and lives of countryside dwellers. She also published three standalone eBooks.

Life and career

Shaw grew up in Armley, Leeds, and attended the progressive independent co-educational Wennington School. She became a school teacher and worked with deaf children. She lived with her husband, father of her four children, in a Dorset village where she found inspiration for her stories about rural life.

In an interview with Shaw in the Sunday Telegraph, Rebecca Tyrell said Shaw was 'a very gifted storyteller and that is quite an art.'

A review in The Telegraph [3] for 'A Village Deception' described her style as 'The Archers meet Midsomer Murders'.

Shaw wrote 19 books based in the fictional village of Turnham Malpas:

  1. The New Rector (1994)
  2. Talk of the Village (1995)
  3. Village Matters (1996)
  4. The Village Show (1997)
  5. Village Secrets (1998)
  6. Scandal in the Village (1999)
  7. Village Gossip (1999)
  8. Trouble in the Village (2000)
  9. A Village Dilemma (2002)
  10. Intrigue in the Village (2003)
  11. Whispers in the Village (2005)
  12. A Village Feud (2006)
  13. The Village Green Affair (2008)
  14. The Village Newcomers (2010)
  15. A Village Deception (2011)
  16. A Village in Jeopardy (2012)
  17. Village Fortunes (2014)
  18. Village Rumours (2015)
  19. Mystery in the Village (2015)

She wrote 6 books based in the fictional village of Barleybridge:

  1. A Country Affair (2001)
  2. Country Wives (2001)
  3. Country Lovers (2003)
  4. Country Passions (2004)
  5. One Hot Country Summer (2007)
  6. Love in the Country (2009)

Shaw's three eBooks:

  1. The House at Spinnaker Cove (2014)
  2. Curtain Up (2014)
  3. The Love of a Family (2018)

Shaw died in 2015 after a major stroke. [4] She was survived for two years by her husband, who subsequently died on 25 December 2017, and her four children.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enid Blyton</span> English childrens writer (1897–1968)

Enid Mary Blyton was an English children's writer, whose books have been worldwide bestsellers since the 1930s, selling more than 600 million copies. Her books are still enormously popular and have been translated into ninety languages. As of June 2019, Blyton held 4th place for the most translated author. She wrote on a wide range of topics, including education, natural history, fantasy, mystery, and biblical narratives. She is best remembered today for her Noddy, Famous Five, Secret Seven, the Five Find-Outers, and Malory Towers books, although she also wrote many others, including; St. Clare's, The Naughtiest Girl, and The Faraway Tree series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louise Erdrich</span> American author (born 1954)

Karen Louise Erdrich is an American author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, a federally recognized tribe of Ojibwe people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joan Collins</span> English actress and writer (born 1933)

Dame Joan Henrietta Collins is an English actress, author and columnist. With a career spanning nearly 8 decades, Collins is the recipient of several accolades, including a Golden Globe Award, a People's Choice Award, two Soap Opera Digest Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. She is one of the last surviving actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. In 1983, Collins was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She has been recognised for her philanthropy, particularly her advocacy towards causes relating to children, which has earned her many honours. In 2015, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for her charitable services, presented to her by the then Prince of Wales, Charles III.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rebecca West</span> British feminist and author (1892–1983)

Dame Cicily Isabel Fairfield, known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. An author who wrote in many genres, West reviewed books for The Times, the New York Herald Tribune, The Sunday Telegraph and The New Republic, and she was a correspondent for The Bookman. Her major works include Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), on the history and culture of Yugoslavia; A Train of Powder (1955), her coverage of the Nuremberg trials, published originally in The New Yorker; The Meaning of Treason, later The New Meaning of Treason (1964), a study of the trial of the British fascist William Joyce and others; The Return of the Soldier (1918), a modernist World War I novel; and the "Aubrey trilogy" of autobiographical novels, The Fountain Overflows (1956), This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund (1985). Time called her "indisputably the world's number one woman writer" in 1947. She was made CBE in 1949, and DBE in 1959; in each case, the citation reads: "writer and literary critic". She took the pseudonym "Rebecca West" from the rebellious young heroine in Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen. She was a recipient of the Benson Medal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kate Mosse</span> English writer (born 1961)

Katherine Louise Mosse is a British novelist, non-fiction and short story writer and broadcaster. She is best known for her 2005 novel Labyrinth, which has been translated into more than 37 languages. She co-founded in 1996 the annual award for best UK-published English-language novel by a woman that is now known as the Women's Prize for Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jackie Collins</span> English novelist (1937–2015)

Jacqueline Jill Collins was an English romance novelist and actress. She moved to Los Angeles in 1985 and spent most of her career there. She wrote 32 novels, all of which appeared on The New York Times bestsellers list. Her books have sold more than 500 million copies and have been translated into 40 languages. Eight of her novels have been adapted for the screen, either as films or television miniseries. She was the younger sister of Dame Joan Collins.

Dora Jessie Saint MBE , née Shafe, best known by the pen name Miss Read, was an English novelist and, by profession, a schoolmistress. Her pseudonym was derived from her mother's maiden name. She is best known for two series of novels set in the English countryside – the Fairacre novels and the Thrush Green novels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sophie Kinsella</span> English author

Madeleine Sophie Wickham, known by her pen name Sophie Kinsella, is an English author. The first two novels in her best-selling Shopaholic series, The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic and Shopaholic Abroad, were adapted into the film Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009). Her books have sold over 40 million copies in more than 60 countries, and been translated into over 40 languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pat Sugden</span> Fictional character from Emmerdale

Patricia Ruth "Pat" Sugden is a fictional character from the British soap opera Emmerdale, played by actresses Lynn Dalby in 1972 and 1974. Helen Weir took over the role when Pat was reintroduced as a regular character in 1980. Pat's main stories are her marriages to violent drunk, Tom Merrick and later Jack Sugden. One of Pat's most prominent storylines involved the reveal of her son, Jackie Merrick being Jack's biological son. Weir and Hornby began a relationship off-screen and later married. Weir became pregnant and writers decided to also make Pat pregnant and she gives birth to Robert Sugden. Producers offered Weir an additional two year contract to remain in Emmerdale but she declined their offer. Weir later revealed that her decision came from a dispute with producers over the inclusion of her and Hornby's son playing the role of Robert. Producers decided to kill Pat off in a car accident story and she made her final appearance during the episode broadcast on 26 August 1986.

Allie Esiri, formerly Allie Byrne, is a British writer/poetry curator and former stage, film, and television actress.

Eloisa James is the pen name of Mary Bly. She is a tenured Shakespeare professor at Fordham University who also writes best-selling Regency and Georgian romance novels under her pen name. Her novels are published in 30 countries and have sold approximately 7 million copies worldwide. She also wrote a bestselling memoir about the year her family spent in France, Paris in Love.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christina McKenna</span>

Christina McKenna is a bestselling Irish author and novelist. She has written books that comprise the Tailorstown series.

Jay Griffiths is a British writer and author of Wild: An Elemental Journey, Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time, Anarchipelago, A Love Letter from a Stray Moon, Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape and Tristimania: A Diary of Manic Depression.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sandie Shaw</span> English pop singer (born 1947)

Sandie Shaw is a retired English pop singer. One of the most successful British female singers of the 1960s, she had three UK number one singles with "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" (1964), "Long Live Love" (1965) and "Puppet on a String" (1967). With the latter, she became the first British entry to win the Eurovision Song Contest. She returned to the UK Top 40, for the first time in 15 years, with her 1984 cover of the Smiths song "Hand in Glove". Shaw retired from the music industry in 2013.

Rebecca Frayn is an English documentary film maker, screenwriter, novelist and actress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachel Abbott</span> British author

Rachel Abbott is an English author of psychological thrillers. A self-publisher, her first seven novels have combined to sell over three million copies, and have all been bestsellers on Amazon's Kindle store. In 2015, she was named the 14th bestselling author over the last five years on Amazon's Kindle in the UK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rebecca Pow</span> British Conservative politician

Rebecca Faye Clark, better known by her maiden name as Rebecca Pow, is a British politician who serves as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Nature since November 2023. also having previously served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from 2019 to 2022.

Ellen Stimson is an American author. In 2013 she wrote the work Mud Season, detailing her family's life in small town Vermont, after moving from the St. Louis area. The stories that appear in her books are largely based around their holiday traditions and life running a small country store in Dorset, Vermont. Parts of her books have also appeared in Reader's Digest. Her follow-up Good Grief! was published in 2014, which was then followed by her book An Old Fashioned Christmas.

Taylor Jenkins Reid is an American author most known for her novels The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Daisy Jones & the Six, One True Loves, Malibu Rising, and Carrie Soto is Back.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Natasha Solomons</span> British author (born 1980)

Natasha Solomons is a British author. Her novels include House of Gold, The Gallery of Vanished Husbands, The House at Tyneford, The Novel of the Viola, The Song Collector, Song of Hartgrove Hall and Mr Rosenblum's List. Solomons has won awards for her novels, including several for The House at Tyneford and The Song of Hartgrove Hall. Her work has been translated into seventeen languages.

References

  1. "Tributes paid to bestselling Dorset author Rebecca Shaw". Dorset Echo. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  2. "Rebecca Shaw". Orion Publishing Group. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  3. Rhodes, Chloe (22 February 2011). "Genre: Romance". ISSN   0307-1235 . Retrieved 27 November 2019.
  4. About Rebecca