Flora Kidd
Encyclopedia
Flora Kidd was a British
-Canadian popular writer
of over 70 romance novel
s in Mills & Boon
from 1966 to 2000.
, England
. In 1949, she graduated at the Liverpool University, where she met Robert Kidd, her husband with who she had four kids' Richard, Patricia, Peter and David.
The Kidd marriage moved to Scotland
, where Flora began teaching. There, she wrote her first novel, that was published in 1966. She continued to write while their children grew.
In 1977, the family Kidd installed in Saint John, New Brunswick
, Canada
.
publishing house since all subsequent romance novels published by the series have been written in third person narratives. A critical year for switch from first to third person can be traced to the year 1968 through an example of a collection of Isobel Chace novels, harlequin omnibus 7, where The Saffron Sky (1967) and A Handful of Silver (1968) were both written in first person narratives, while the last novel The Damask Rose (1968) switched to a third person narrative.
Scotland
and its surroundings are a mainstay of Flora Kidd's stories in the beginning of her writing career.
She realistically exploits her time spent in Scotland
in stories that are full of local color describing customs, manners and re-creating dialects. For example, Whistle and I'll Come (1967), My Heart Remembers (1971) and Stranger in the Glen (1974).
Whistle and I'll Come (1967) is an homage to Scotland
's national poet Robert Burns
. 'Whistle my Love and I'll Come Down' is a Scottish love ballad that predated Robert Burns
and was refined by the latter into a wistful song. Flora Kidd adapts this popular song into a romantic novel. The following stanza from Robert Burns
' song is introduced in the beginning of her story.
'O whistle, an' I'll come to ye, my lad;
O whistle, an' I'll come to ye, my lad:
Though father and mither should baith gae mad,
O whistle, an' I'll come to ye, my lad.Robert Burns
Like her 1967 release Whistle and I'll Come, she sets up the hero and the heroine of When Birds Do Sing (1970) against the theme of John Keats
' poem "La Belle Dame sans Merci" ("The Beautiful Lady without Pity"). Although "La Belle Dame sans Merci" opens with a description of the knight in a barren landscape, "haggard" and "woe-begone", it is the heroine Lindsay in When Birds Do Sing (1970) who shares such sentiment. Unlike the conclusion of the first stanza of Keats' poem, Flora Kidd's story has a happy ending where birds do sing.
O what can ail thee, knight at arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.John Keats
My Heart Remembers (1971) is a title borrowed from Robert Louis Stevenson
's poem To S.R. Crockett written in Valimia, which is also mentioned in the story. Sally from little seaside town of Portbride, Scotland
finds her sib, a local expression best defined as soul-mate, in Ross since both share in the communion with surrounding moorland
:
Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how!Robert Louis Stevenson
The Legend of the Swans (1973) is based on one of many Highland folklores, where a pair of swans return to the loch
. The swans have come back after being away for three hundred years. Then the chief of the Macneal clan was the master of the glen
where the loch
belonged. Like the current master Captain Will Fox, he was a soldier, too. He brought a young bride with him from the South. But she was often lonely. One day she disappeared. She went south when the swans flew south. The glen
has been cursed ever since. However, the curse is lifted when history repeats itself once more as Gina arrives in the glen with Will.
Her love for the Scott
ish highlands is evident in the warmth of the characters depicted in Stranger in the Glen
(1974). Here the arrival of Duncan coincides in Jan's imagination of the long awaited return of a local hero whose last descendant, a young man, emigrated to Australia.
Flora Kidd inevitably uses various other locations for her stories. However, Scotland
remains a sentiment
al favorite. For example, her 1979 novel Stay Through the Night set on the other side of Atlantic in the Caribbean
, contains an episode in which the main protagonist
s are back in Scotland
.
The plots for Gallant's Fancy (1974) and Enchantment in Blue (1976) also take off in the Caribbean Islands, indicating a period of writing that took Flora Kidd to the location of her novels. "Gallant's Fancy" (1974) presents an interesting anecdote to the 'typing pool' where all aspiring working girls were relegated at one time or another. A job offer in far away Caribbean
seemed to the heroine a chance to break from the routine.
The Canadian Affair (1979) shows Flora Kidd in her transition mode from Scotland
to Canada
.
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
-Canadian popular writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
of over 70 romance novel
Romance novel
The romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. Novels in this genre place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Through the late...
s in Mills & Boon
Mills & Boon
Mills & Boon is a British publisher of romance novels. It was founded in 1908, and was independent until its purchase in 1971 by Harlequin Enterprises with whom the company had had a long informal partnership...
from 1966 to 2000.
Biography
Flora born on 1926 in LiverpoolLiverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. In 1949, she graduated at the Liverpool University, where she met Robert Kidd, her husband with who she had four kids' Richard, Patricia, Peter and David.
The Kidd marriage moved to Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, where Flora began teaching. There, she wrote her first novel, that was published in 1966. She continued to write while their children grew.
In 1977, the family Kidd installed in Saint John, New Brunswick
Saint John, New Brunswick
City of Saint John , or commonly Saint John, is the largest city in the province of New Brunswick, and the first incorporated city in Canada. The city is situated along the north shore of the Bay of Fundy at the mouth of the Saint John River. In 2006 the city proper had a population of 74,043...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
.
Book Notes
Flora Kidd's debut novel Visit to Rowanbank (1966) is set in a first person narrative, and is indicative of the historical development of this genre by the Mills & BoonMills & Boon
Mills & Boon is a British publisher of romance novels. It was founded in 1908, and was independent until its purchase in 1971 by Harlequin Enterprises with whom the company had had a long informal partnership...
publishing house since all subsequent romance novels published by the series have been written in third person narratives. A critical year for switch from first to third person can be traced to the year 1968 through an example of a collection of Isobel Chace novels, harlequin omnibus 7, where The Saffron Sky (1967) and A Handful of Silver (1968) were both written in first person narratives, while the last novel The Damask Rose (1968) switched to a third person narrative.
Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
and its surroundings are a mainstay of Flora Kidd's stories in the beginning of her writing career.
She realistically exploits her time spent in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
in stories that are full of local color describing customs, manners and re-creating dialects. For example, Whistle and I'll Come (1967), My Heart Remembers (1971) and Stranger in the Glen (1974).
Whistle and I'll Come (1967) is an homage to Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
's national poet Robert Burns
Robert Burns
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
. 'Whistle my Love and I'll Come Down' is a Scottish love ballad that predated Robert Burns
Robert Burns
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
and was refined by the latter into a wistful song. Flora Kidd adapts this popular song into a romantic novel. The following stanza from Robert Burns
Robert Burns
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
' song is introduced in the beginning of her story.
'O whistle, an' I'll come to ye, my lad;
O whistle, an' I'll come to ye, my lad:
Though father and mither should baith gae mad,
O whistle, an' I'll come to ye, my lad.Robert Burns
Like her 1967 release Whistle and I'll Come, she sets up the hero and the heroine of When Birds Do Sing (1970) against the theme of John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
' poem "La Belle Dame sans Merci" ("The Beautiful Lady without Pity"). Although "La Belle Dame sans Merci" opens with a description of the knight in a barren landscape, "haggard" and "woe-begone", it is the heroine Lindsay in When Birds Do Sing (1970) who shares such sentiment. Unlike the conclusion of the first stanza of Keats' poem, Flora Kidd's story has a happy ending where birds do sing.
O what can ail thee, knight at arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.John Keats
My Heart Remembers (1971) is a title borrowed from Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
's poem To S.R. Crockett written in Valimia, which is also mentioned in the story. Sally from little seaside town of Portbride, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
finds her sib, a local expression best defined as soul-mate, in Ross since both share in the communion with surrounding moorland
Moorland
Moorland or moor is a type of habitat, in the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome, found in upland areas, characterised by low-growing vegetation on acidic soils and heavy fog...
:
Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how!Robert Louis Stevenson
The Legend of the Swans (1973) is based on one of many Highland folklores, where a pair of swans return to the loch
Loch
Loch is the Irish and Scottish Gaelic word for a lake or a sea inlet. It has been anglicised as lough, although this is pronounced the same way as loch. Some lochs could also be called a firth, fjord, estuary, strait or bay...
. The swans have come back after being away for three hundred years. Then the chief of the Macneal clan was the master of the glen
Glen
A glen is a valley, typically one that is long, deep, and often glacially U-shaped; or one with a watercourse running through such a valley. Whittow defines it as a "Scottish term for a deep valley in the Highlands" that is "narrower than a strath."...
where the loch
Loch
Loch is the Irish and Scottish Gaelic word for a lake or a sea inlet. It has been anglicised as lough, although this is pronounced the same way as loch. Some lochs could also be called a firth, fjord, estuary, strait or bay...
belonged. Like the current master Captain Will Fox, he was a soldier, too. He brought a young bride with him from the South. But she was often lonely. One day she disappeared. She went south when the swans flew south. The glen
Glen
A glen is a valley, typically one that is long, deep, and often glacially U-shaped; or one with a watercourse running through such a valley. Whittow defines it as a "Scottish term for a deep valley in the Highlands" that is "narrower than a strath."...
has been cursed ever since. However, the curse is lifted when history repeats itself once more as Gina arrives in the glen with Will.
Her love for the Scott
Scott
- Companies :* H. H. Scott, Inc., vintage tube hi-fi company* SCOTT Sports, a producer of bicycles and sportswear* The Scott Motorcycle Company* The Scott Paper Company, brand of paper towels and toilet paper owned by the Kimberly-Clark Corporation...
ish highlands is evident in the warmth of the characters depicted in Stranger in the Glen
Glen
A glen is a valley, typically one that is long, deep, and often glacially U-shaped; or one with a watercourse running through such a valley. Whittow defines it as a "Scottish term for a deep valley in the Highlands" that is "narrower than a strath."...
(1974). Here the arrival of Duncan coincides in Jan's imagination of the long awaited return of a local hero whose last descendant, a young man, emigrated to Australia.
Flora Kidd inevitably uses various other locations for her stories. However, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
remains a sentiment
Sentiment
Sentiment can refer to activity of five material senses mistaking them as transcendental:*Feelings and emotions...
al favorite. For example, her 1979 novel Stay Through the Night set on the other side of Atlantic in the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
, contains an episode in which the main protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
s are back in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
.
The plots for Gallant's Fancy (1974) and Enchantment in Blue (1976) also take off in the Caribbean Islands, indicating a period of writing that took Flora Kidd to the location of her novels. "Gallant's Fancy" (1974) presents an interesting anecdote to the 'typing pool' where all aspiring working girls were relegated at one time or another. A job offer in far away Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
seemed to the heroine a chance to break from the routine.
The Canadian Affair (1979) shows Flora Kidd in her transition mode from Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
.
Single Novels
- Visit to Rowanbank (1966) also known as Nurse at Rowanbank (1967)
- Jinx Ranch (1966)
- Love Alters Not (1967)
- Whistle and I'll come (1967)
- Strange as a Dream (1968)
- Wind So Gay (1968)
- When Birds Do Sing (1970)
- The Dazzle on the Sea (1971)
- My Heart Remembers (1971)
- Love Is Fire (1971)
- Remedy for Love (1972)
- Cave of the White Rose (1972)
- Taming of Lisa (1972)
- Beyond the Sunset (1973)
- Night on the Mountain (1973)
- If Love Be Love (1973)
- The Legend of the Swans (1973)
- If Love Be Blind (1973)
- Gallant's Fancy (1974)
- Paper Marriage (1974)
- Enchantment in blue (1975)
- Stranger in the Glen (1975)
- The Bargain Bride (1976)
- The Dance of Courtship (1976)
- The Summer Wife (1976)
- The Black Knight (1976)
- Jungle of Desire (1977)
- Night of the Yellow Moon (1977)
- Dangerous Pretence (1977)
- To Play With Fire (1977)
- Sweet Torment (1978)
- Castle of Temptation (1978)
- Marriage in Mexico (1978)
- Canadian Affair (1979)
- Passionate Encounter (1979)
- Tangled Shadows (1979)
- Together Again (1979)
- Stay Through the Night (1979)
- Arranged Marriage (1980)
- Silken Bond (1980)
- Wife by Contract (1980)
- Passionate Stranger (1981)
- Beyond Control (1981)
- Personal Affair (1981)
- Bride for a Captain (1981)
- Meeting at Midnight (1981)
- Between Pride and Passion (1982)
- Make Believe Marriage (1982)
- Tempted to Love (1982)
- Serenade Pour Anne (1983)
- Dark Seduction (1983)
- Tropical Tempest (1983)
- Dangerous Encounter (1983)
- Passionate Pursuit (1984)
- Desperate Desire (1984)
- Open Marriage (1984)
- Flight to Passion (1984)
- Secret Pleasure (1985)
- Arrogant Lover (1985)
- Passionate Choice (1986)
- The Married Lovers (1986)
- Masquerade Marriage (1987)
- Beloved Deceiver (1987)
- When Lovers Meet (1987)
- The Loving Gamble (1988)
- A Risky Affair (1989)
- The Twenty-Third Man (1997)
Marco Polo Series
- To Hell or Melbourne (1994)
- Until We Meet Again (1998)
- Restless Spirits (2000)
Omnibus In Collaboration
- Make Way For Tomorrow / My Heart Remembers / The Blue Mountains Of Kabuta (1975) (with Gloria Bevan and Hilary Wilde)
- Spirit Sun / Shadow of the Past / Beyond the Sunset (1977) (with Dorothy Cork and Monica Douglas)
- Stranger in the Glen / The Man At Kambala / Lord of the Sierras (1978) (with Kay ThorpeKay ThorpeKay Thorpe is a British author of over seventy-five romance novels. She published her novels in Mills & Boon since 1968. All her novels have also been published under Harlequin Enterprises Limited. Over a period of four decades, she has produced a body of sensuous work that investigates heritage,...
and Anne WealeAnne WealeJay Blakeney was a British newspaper reporter, well-known as romance writer under the pseudonyms Anne Weale and Andrea Blake. She wrote over 88 for Mills & Boon from 1955 to 2002...
)
External links
- Flora Kidd's Webpage in Fantastic Fiction's Website