The unexpected switch at first alarmed her publishers – she was, unusually, published by the same firm, Hodder & Stoughton, for her entire career, never using an agent – but the book was a No 1 bestseller for weeks. The Crystal Cave (1970), the first of a fictional trilogy about Merlin, arose from her fascination with Roman-British history. Over the next 15 years, a whole line of novels of a similar suspenseful nature rolled out, with titles including Nine Coaches Waiting (1958), My Brother Michael (1959) and The Ivy Tree (1961). Madam, Will You Talk? featured a woman lured into danger by her concern for a motherless boy. Her writing must have provided a natural form of expression for a person not given to self-revelation. Also tender-hearted and with a strong moral sense, they spoke, one felt, with the voice of their creator. Instead, Stewart's stories were narrated by poised, smart, highly educated young women who drove fast cars and knew how to fight their corner. It was her "anti-namby-pamby" reaction, as she called it, to the "silly heroine" of the conventional contemporary thriller who "is told not to open the door to anybody and immediately opens it to the first person who comes along". Stewart introduced a different kind of heroine for a newly emerging womanhood.
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