Anne Edwards, a prodigious and peripatetic author who published best-selling books about the actresses Vivien Leigh and Katharine Hepburn as well as 14 other celebrity biographies, eight novels, three children’s books, two memoirs and one autobiography, died on Jan. 20 in Beverly Hills, Calif. She was 96. Her daughter, Catherine Edwards Sadler, said she died of lung cancer at a senior living facility. A child performer on radio and the stage, Ms. Edwards sold her first screenplay in 1949, when she was 22 (the movie “Quantez,” a western starring Fred MacMurray, was released in 1957); her first novel (the mystery “The Survivors”) in 1968; and her first biography (of Judy Garland) in 1975. Her “Vivien Leigh: A Biography” (1977) spent 19 weeks on The New York Times’s hardcover best-seller list. Reviewing that book for The Times, Richard R. Lingeman wrote that Ms. Edwards “has, with tact, sympathy and intelligence, given us an admirable portrait of Vivien Leigh that is a portrait of an admirable lady.”

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Persons: Anne Edwards, Vivien Leigh, Katharine Hepburn, Catherine Edwards Sadler, Edwards, Fred MacMurray, Judy Garland, Richard R, Lingeman, Edwards “, ” Organizations: York, The Times Locations: Beverly Hills, Calif, ”