It’s the birthday of romance novelist Barbara Cartland (1901-2000), who wrote more than 700 romance novels, sold over 1 billion copies worldwide, and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s top selling author. She also probably had more pink chiffon gowns hanging in her closest than anyone else in the known universe.

Cartland was born in Edgbaston, Birmingham, to Captain Bertram Cartland and Mary Hamilton Scobell, a family whose fortunes changed abruptly upon the 1902 suicide of Captain Bertram’s father. The Cartlands gave up all but two of their servants, moved to a small house, and had two more children, both boys. (Sigh. I’m sorry, it’s just painful to imagine anyone having to reduce to two servants.)

Captain Bertram was killed toward the end of WWI, and the family moved to London the next year. Cartland’s first novel, Jigsaw, was published in 1923 and got bad reviews but sold extremely well, but Cartland was still financially strapped. In 1927 she married Alexander “Sachie” McCorquodale; Cartland had a daughter, Raine, in 1929, while her husband had a drinking problem and an affair. Cartland sued for divorce and her husband counter-sued, claiming she’d had an affair with his cousin, Hugh. The divorce made for big splashy headlines and Cartland ultimately won, then married Hugh in 1936. (Hmm…) They had two sons and were happily married until his death.

In 1940, Cartland’s two brothers were killed at Dunkirk on consecutive days; the loss of her brother, Ronald, in particular, was the most devastating event of her life. Cartland became involved in the war effort in several ways, including finding more than 1,000 secondhand wedding dresses for service brides to use. Many of these brides thanked her fifty years later for what she’d done for them.

All this time, Cartland was writing, writing, writing… By 1937 she’d written 17 novels, by her husband’s death in 1963 she’d written 67, and after his death she wrote a great deal faster. She eventually wrote via dictation to assistants, and could dictate 7,000 words in an afternoon. Her heroines were without fail virginal, her heroes worldly and uniformed, and her secretaries not allowed to cough while she dictated (according to her New York Times obituary). She took 60+ vitamins a day, eschewed white bread and white sugar, and died at the age of 98, as her mother had.

Bonus royalty fact: Cartland was the step-grandmother of Princess Diana.

Have the sort of Monday you always wish you could have and stay scrupulously honest to the data.