Eventually as many as 3 million copies were sold, published reports said. Though mild by today's standards, the book's raciness drew readers by the thousands, selling 100,000 copies the first week after it was published. Amber's flair with words amplifies the effect: ''Adultery is not a crime, it's an amusement,'' she purrs. Winsor's 972-page work, runs through lovers from a highwayman named Black Jack Mallard to King Charles II at a pace that led a reviewer to recommend using an adding machine to keep track. Cooke pointed out that the ''preposterously long and sumptuously naughty book'' appeared 12 years before Grace Metalious's Peyton Place and 22 years before Jacqueline Susann's ''Valley of the Dolls.''Īmber St. ''Miss Winsor, if she felt so inclined, could justifiably claim to be the woman who invented the modern best seller,'' Rachel Cooke wrote in The Observer, a London newspaper, last year. Kathleen Winsor, whose 1944 novel ''Forever Amber,'' detailing the sexual adventures of a young woman in Restoration England, became a model for romantic best sellers to follow, died on Monday at her home in Manhattan.
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