Barbara Cartland was one of the prominent British authors of the 20th century. After her marriage, she used to write under her married name, Barbara McCorquodale. She has written more than 700 books and it is estimated that above 750 million copies of her books have sold. Her first novel is “Jig-Saw”, a thriller that became a best seller. Her later novels attained popularity despite their moderate story line. She was even named as the top-selling author across the world by the Guinness Book of World Records for writing 23 novels in a single year. One of the main inspirations behind her romantic novels was Edwardian author Elinor Glyn, a pioneer in the mass-market erotic fiction. As she came from an aristocratic society, the background and characters of her novels represent British upper class. The interesting feature of her novels is that all of them have a happy ending. Idealistic love and ideal women play dominant part in all of these novels. She also wrote biographies of several real historical characters like Josephine, Empress of France. She was a popular media personality and used to make appearances on television and public events to discuss issues like love, politics and society. During the period between 1920s and 1930s, she was popular for her beauty, charm and daring parties.