Bestselling British writer Joanna Trollope dies at 82

LONDON (AP) — British writer Joanna Trollope, whose bestselling novels charted domestic and romantic travails in well-heeled rural England, has died, her family said Friday. She was 82.

Trollope’s daughters, Antonia and Louise, said the writer died peacefully at her home in Oxfordshire, southern England, on Thursday.

Trollope wrote almost two dozen contemporary novels, including “The Rector’s Wife,” “Marrying the Mistress,” “Other People’s Children” and “Next of Kin.” They were often dubbed “Aga sagas,” after the old-fashioned Aga ovens found in affluent country homes.

Trollope disliked the term, noting that her books tackled uncomfortable subjects including infidelity, marital breakdown and the challenges of parenting.

“That was a very unfortunate phrase and I think it’s done me a lot of damage,” she once said. “It was so patronizing to the readers, too.”

Trollope’s most recent novel, “Mum & Dad,” examined the “sandwich generation” of middle-aged people looking after both children and elderly parents.

Trollope also published 10 historical novels under the pseudonym Caroline Harvey.

Trollope, a distant relative of Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope, was born in Minchinhampton in the west of England in 1943. She studied English at Oxford University, then worked in Britain’s Foreign Office and as a teacher before becoming a full-time writer in 1980. She became a household name after “The Rector’s Wife” was adapted for television in 1991.

Trollope’s novel “Parson Harding’s Daughter” won a novel of the year award from the Romantic Novelists’ Association in 1980. In 2010, the association gave her a lifetime achievement award for services to romance.

In 2019, she was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, or CBE, by Queen Elizabeth II.

Her literary agent, James Gill, called Trollope “one of our most cherished, acclaimed and widely enjoyed novelists.

“Joanna will be mourned by her children, grandchildren, family, her countless friends and — of course — her readers,” Gill said.