Dorothy Daniels

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According to a mini-biography, accompanied by a photograph, on the rear cover of one of her many gothic novels, Dorothy Daniels was born in Connecticut but by the time she was a full-time writer, in the middle 1960's, was living in California. She was initlally an English teacher at a state college but later wrote articles that appeared in national magazines, which led to her career as a writer of mostly gothic paperbacks. Lancer books, which published more than twenty of her novels, proclaimed her "America's Most Popular Gothic Novelist" while Pocket Books claimed her gothic novels had sold over eleven million copies by the middle 1970's. Her approximately 146 novels were published by a dozen paperback publishers, some had as many as four printings while others were printed only once. Lancer and Warner Books together published more than sixty of her novels. The vast majority of her novels were written in the first person and this was a trademark of sorts with Dorothy Daniels, as she rarely strayed from this pattern. Several of her novels take place in the Old South. Her novels were also considerably more involving plot-wise and contained more character development than other gothic novels. She published her last gothic novel, "House of Silence", in late 1980. Afterward she wrote a handfull of historical romances and her last published novel appears to be "Crisis at Valcour" in 1985.

In addition to the pseudonyms listed here, she published one book as Norman Daniels, which some have said was her husband's name, while others have said was her real name and that Dorothy Daniels was actually a man. The aforementioned photograph on the rear cover of her 1965 book "Cliffside Castle" contradicts this. Still another internet website insists that Dorothy Daniels was actually a man named Paul Hugo Little who lived in Chigago and wrote over 700 books under at least a dozen pseudonyms. We may never know for certain who Dorothy Daniels was. Several of her gothic paperbacks, credited to Dorothy Daniels or Suzanne Somers, were copyrighted by Norman Daniels. She published one novel, "House of False Faces", under the pseudonym Helen Gray Weston, but this book was later reissued as "Dorothy Daniels writing as Helen Gray Weston". She wrote at least four nurse romance books as Dorothy Daniels, and may have written three others under the pseudonym Doris Knight. While the Doris Knight information is unconfirmed, the writing style of Doris Knight is incredibly similar to that of Dorothy Daniels.

See Also

Books

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