Milestones: Sep. 16, 1985

DIED. Taylor Caldwell, 84, prodigious, best-selling author whose more than 40 books, mostly intricately plotted historico- romantic melodramas liberally peopled with schemers and rogues, including Dear and Glorious Physician (1959), Testimony of Two Men (1968) and Captains and the Kings (1972), delighted her legions of fans but drew the contumely of critics for their outsize characterizations, empurpled prose and increasingly far-right political views; in Greenwich, Conn.