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> Phyllis Whitney, 67, can scarcely recall a time when she was not scribbling something. Her father was an itinerant shipping agent, and she spent her childhood in Japanese and Philippine hotels. To her, hair-raising suspense stories suggest home and hearth because that was usually all her mother could find to read aloud at bedtime. She has written everything: stories for Sunday-school papers and pulp magazines, juvenile and teen-age books as well as novels. She hates housework and has no hobbies, preferring to sit at the typewriter all day writing fiction or dealing with a huge correspondence. Outside, her husband, a retired businessman, cuts trails through their 100 acres of western New Jersey woodland so the grandchildren can ride in the snowmobile.
> Elizabeth Goudge, 70, has led an even quieter life. The only child of a parson, she spent her youth in two English cathedral towns, Wells and Ely. She never married, never expected her writing to become more than a pastime, and now lives serenely in a tiny 17th century house in the Thames Valley. The most lyrical of the group, she is also the least concerned with plot. Child from the Sea is her 25th novel, and she claims mildly that it will be her last. — Victoria Holt is a pseudonym, the only one in the group. Its owner is a childless London widow named Eleanor Hibbert, 64, who now spends much of her time on luxury cruises. She is incredibly prolific—more than 100 books in all—and contrives wondrously complex plots. In addition to romances, she does straight historical novels under the name Jean Plaidy.
If any of the ladies breaks the pattern slightly, it is Norah Lofts, simply because she is outspoken. Sample, on the relation between her art and life: "I've had two very happy marriages and before that an affair or two, and the only time I've seen a man on his knees, he's been chasing a collar stud." She is the most perceptive writer, the only one who can make a meaningful connection between her research and the dramatic situation. A grandmother at 66, she lives in Bury Saint Edmunds, the ancient market town where she was born, in a Manderley-size house whose architecture manages to combine Tudor, Queen Anne and Georgian periods. There is a Rolls in the garage, but the author insists: "Except for gin and cigarettes, I could live on a pound a week."
All the ladies clearly prefer working to spending. Indeed, one of the real mysteries that surrounds the genre is what the authors do with incomes that can run well into six figures annually. They all feel their writing matters, and few are willing to admit they write formula fiction, let alone "women's novels." Says Mary Stewart: "I cannot read what you would call a woman writer." Speaking of critical neglect, Norah Lofts says, "I feel neglected, I feel infuriated, I feel resigned—sometimes all at once. I just think it's very wrong because it may deprive some people of the joy that a good read would give them."
* Martha Duffy