I'm amazed at this author of a Hollywood blockbuster and her links to South Tyneside
I love the story of the New York author who inspired Hollywood blockbusters - and had huge South Tyneside and Tyneside connections.
US author Anya Seton’s novels could be somewhat melodramatic affairs but they were loved so much by tens of thousands of people that they were turned into big screen mega hits.
And while Anya was a New York City-born person, she was keen to find out more about her English roots.
In 1962, Anya visited South Shields which was her father Ernest’s birthplace.
Part of the reason for the visit was to find out more about the family’s ancestral claim by George Seton to the earldom of Winton after its dismissal by the Scottish courts.
But Anya also used the South Tyneside visit to do some of her noted and considerable research which she poured into every one of her books.
Seton’s novels were famed for how extensively she researched the historical facts they were based on, and some of them were best-sellers: including 1944’s Dragonwyck and 1950’s Foxfire, which were both made into Hollywood films.
She did not solve the mystery of the Seton claim, but her visit to Shields did inspire her next novel, Devil Water, centred on the luckless third earl of Derwentwater, James Radclyffe, and his involvement in the Jacobite rising of 1715.
The action moved back and forth between Northumberland, Tyneside, London and America and famously featured Newcastle in the 1962 publication.
A Shields Gazette story from 1962 said: “Always attentive to detail, the New Yorker, who died in 1990, insisted on using Geordie phrases such as I divven’t knaw’ and canny’ in the novel, terms which no doubt passed her American readers by.”
The Seton family had some fantastic achievements. Her father was a naturalist and the pioneer of the Boy Scouts of America.
Her mother Grace was an author, suffragist, and was twice the president of the National League of American Pen Women.
Grace was also the founder of the Campfire Girls and both of Anya’s parents were authors.
Anya Seton was actually the pseudonym of Ann Seton Chase who was born in 1904 and died in 1990 at the age of 86. By then, she had written 12 novels.
I would love to hear from anyone who has a fascinating family history to share. Tell me more by emailing [email protected]