One after another of the books I wrote were Book Club choices, and paperback sales abounded. In England sales were steady but unexciting by comparison. When Marnie hit the headlines in 1962 I remarked in a press interview at the time that I was ‘ the most successful unknown novelist in England’, and the phrase stuck and has often been repeated. Now that the great flush of the Poldark television series is long past, perhaps there is a chance that it may become true again. The strange imbalances in the public awareness of my prosperity may also be partly the reason why so many innocent souls thought the TV series had ‘made’ me. One dear lady from Cornwall wrote to me saying I must think it strange achieving success at last after ‘writing away all these years’. Cornish and West Country newspapers sometimes still contribute to this myth. Though fond of animals – particularly cats, of which for many years we had two Siamese – I never until my middle life owned a dog.
