Editing Susan Howatch (section)

==Earlier novels and sagas==
Her first novel was ''The Dark Shore'' (1965). She published several other "gothic" novels before she turned to the first of her family sagas, ''[[Penmarric]]'' (1971), which details the fortunes and disputes of the Penmar family in [[Cornwall]] during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An important theme of the story is how the mansion of Penmarric becomes controlled by various branches of the family. The family fortune was made in the [[Mining in Cornwall|Cornish tin mining industry]], which is discussed throughout each one of the six parts, each with a different character as narrator. As is made clear by the chapter headings, the fortunes of the family closely parallel the [[House of Plantagenet|Plantagenet family]], including [[Henry II of England]] and [[Eleanor of Aquitaine]], with the mansion representing the throne. It was adapted into a television series with the same name in 1979.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Wallace |first1=Diana |title=The woman's historical novel : British women writers, 1900-2000 |date=2005 |publisher=Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=1403903220 |pages=233 |url=https://archive.org/details/womanshistorical0000wall |access-date=7 March 2020}}</ref>

Howatch wrote the novel at her kitchen table in New Jersey. Publisher [[Michael Korda]] wrote, "It is a frequently stated basic belief of book publishing that somewhere in the country at any given moment some unknown woman is writing a major best-seller (usually referred to as 'the next ''Gone with the Wind''') at her kitchen table while looking after her baby, but this was the first time I had experienced the phenomenon in real life. Susan Howatch had written her massive novel with one hand on the cradle and the other doing the typing, but, like most authors who succeed, she had never doubted that her book would be a bestseller."<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Another Life: A Memoir of Other People|last=Korda|first=Michael|publisher=Random House|year=1999|isbn=9780679456599|pages=[https://archive.org/details/anotherlifememoi00kord/page/307 307-3011]|url=https://archive.org/details/anotherlifememoi00kord/page/307}}</ref> Korda asserted that, while reading the drafts, he noticed similarities to the Plantagenets and asked Howatch if that was the case.  She replied that Shakespeare had borrowed most of his plots from other sources, and asked Korda if he thought anyone would notice.<ref name=":0" />
   
Howatch followed a similar theme in her vast saga, ''[[The Wheel of Fortune (novel)|The Wheel of Fortune]]'', where the story of the Godwin family of Oxmoon in [[Gower Peninsula|Gower, South Wales]], is in fact a re-creation in a modern form of the story of the Plantagenet family of [[Edward III of England]], the modern characters being created from those of his eldest son [[Edward, the Black Prince|Edward of Woodstock (''The Black Prince'')]] and his wife [[Joan of Kent]], [[John of Gaunt]] and his mistress, later wife, [[Katherine Swynford]], [[Richard II of England|Richard II]] (son of Edward of Woodstock), [[Henry IV of England|Henry IV]] (son of John of Gaunt) and Henry IV's eldest son [[Henry V of England|King Henry V]]. Again the mansion represents the throne.

She also wrote three other family sagas, ''Cashelmara'', which focuses on the family of [[Edward I of England|Edward I]] (Edward de Salis), his son, [[Edward II of England|Edward II]] (Patrick de Salis) and others; and ''The Rich Are Different'' followed by its sequel, ''The Sins of the Fathers'', both of which combine to tell the story, in America' s financial industry, of [[Julius Caesar]], [[Cleopatra]], [[Mark Antony]], and [[Octavian]].