It was there that my mother would find me come checkout time, surrounded first by tween smut from Sweet Valley High, then by rapes and murders from Mary Higgins Clark, and then by tales of riches, betrayals and come-from-behind triumphs from Barbara Taylor Bradford. I knew at the time that Ms. Bradford wasn’t considered an important writer like the distinguished Europeans my highbrow sister was reading. Ms. Bradford sold more than 90 million books, including 30 million copies of “A Woman of Substance” alone, making it one of the best-selling novels of all time. They did it because her characters were as real and legible to them as they were to Ms. Bradford herself. Barbara Taylor Bradford changed the way readers who might not have any connection to the shifting sands of literary fashion thought about themselves and their world.

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Persons: Barbara Taylor Bradford, tween smut, Mary Higgins Clark, Bradford wasn’t, Andrew Postman sneered, “, Bradford, ”, Queen Elizabeth II Locations: That’s, Sweet Valley, British, M.F.A