Kathleen Winsor

Kathleen Winsor (October 16, 1919 – May 26, 2003) was an American author. She is best known for her first work, the 1944 romantic novel Forever Amber. The novel, racy for its time, became a runaway bestseller even as it drew criticism from some authorities for its depictions of sexuality. She wrote seven other novels, none of which matched the success of her debut.

Winsor was born October 16, 1919 in Olivia, Minnesota but raised in Berkeley, California. At the age of 18, Winsor made a list of her goals for life. Among those was her hope to write a best-selling novel. Winsor graduated in 1938 from the University of California, Berkeley. During her school years, she married a fellow student, All-American college football player Robert Herwig. In 1937, she began writing a thrice-weekly sports column for the Oakland Tribune. Although that job only lasted a year, Winsor remained at the newspaper, working as a receptionist. She was fired in 1938 when the newspaper chose to trim its workforce.

Winsor became interested in the Restoration period through her husband. Herwig was writing a paper for school on Charles II, and, out of boredom, Winsor read one of his research books.

Her husband joined the military at the outbreak of World War II and spent five years with the United States Marines fighting in the Pacific theatre. During that time, Winsor studied the Restoration period, claiming to have read 356 books on the subject. She began writing a novel based on her research. Her fifth draft of the novel was accepted for publication. The publishers promptly edited the book down to one-fifth of its original size. The resulting novel, Forever Amber, was 972 pages long. The novel took readers on a frolic through Restoration England and offered vivid images of fashion, politics, sex, affairs and public disasters of the time, including the plague and the Great Fire of London.

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