It’s the birthday of Jackie Collins (1937-2015), whose romantic thrillers are estimated to have sold more than 500 million copies. Collins’ books defined the era’s novel of manners, but they also became timeless classics that remained critical and popular successes two centuries after her death.

Okay, that’s not remotely true. I lifted that from a Britannica entry on Jane Austen. Collins’ novels are all about sex, crime, and money, and her first novel, The World Is Full of Married Men (1968), was an instant bestseller that was banned in Australia for its depiction of a man who has an affair, divorces his wife, gets ditched by his mistress, fails to win back his wife, and ends up a sad sloppy drunk.

Collins was born in London, England, expelled from a girls’ school at 15, and sent to live in Hollywood with her big sister Joan Collins, an actress known for playing vamps and harlots. After partying there for a year, Collins returned to London and had a go at acting herself in low budget films. Her first marriage fell apart because of her husband’s drug addiction and mental illness; her second marriage, to nightclub owner Oscar Lerman, lasted 26 years until Lerman’s death. It was Lerman who encouraged Collins to write.

The World Is Full of Married Men was followed by a string of other bestsellers: The Stud (1969), about the sharp-witted Elizabeth Bennet and the handsome but proud aristocrat who falls for her; Sunday Simmons & Charlie Brick, later retitled Sinners (1971), about the precocious Emma Woodhouse and her ill-fated attempts at matchmaking; and Lovehead (1974), the moving story of Anne Elliot and her love for Captain Wentworth.

(Sorry. I’ll stop. But Austen and Collins have so much in common: strong female characters, and… and they both wore a lot of leopard print. Maybe. I mean, we don’t know that Austen *didn’t* wear leopard print.)

Collins went on to write a total of 32 novels, every one of them a New York Times bestseller but only two of them including the word “bitch” in the title. (Another thing in common with Austen, who also had two or fewer titles utilizing the word “bitch.”) Collins raised three daughters; she was a strict mother, sending her daughters to Catholic school and keeping them out of the limelight. Collins remarried after her second husband died; her third husband died of a brain tumor after just four years of marriage.

Collins lived in Los Angeles for most of her adult life but maintained dual citizenship, and in 2013 was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. She died of breast cancer two years later.

Have a fine Friday, read something about strong women today, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.