NEW YORK — Barbara Taylor Bradford, a British journalist who became a publishing sensation in her 40s with the saga “A Woman of Substance” and wrote more than a dozen other novels that sold tens of millions of copies, has died. She was 91.

Bradford died Sunday at her home in New York City, a spokesperson said Monday.

Starting with “A Woman of Substance,” published in 1979, Bradford averaged nearly a book a year as one of the world’s most popular and wealthiest writers, her net worth estimated at more than $200 million and her fame so high that her image appeared on a postage stamp in 1999. In 2007, Queen Elizabeth II awarded her an OBE (The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire).

Her books were published in 40 languages and sold more than 90 million copies around the world.

With titles like “Breaking the Rules” and “Act of Will,” she specialized in stories of women fighting for love and power in a man’s world. Her favorite among her books was “The Women in His Life,” inspired by her husband’s escape from the Nazis.

Bradford was married for 56 years to German-born film producer Robert Bradford, who died in 2019. They had no children.

Born May 10, 1933, in Leeds, England, she was an only child in a working-class family who loved books early.

Before her birth, her parents, Winston and Freda Walker Taylor, had a son, Vivian, who died of meningitis. Her father was an industrial engineer who was laid off during the Depression. Her mother, a nurse, supported the family.

As a girl, Bradford had a story published in a local magazine.

By age 16, she left school against her parents’ wishes to become a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post. Over the next 30 years, she would work as fashion editor of Woman’s Own Magazine, cover a variety of beats for the London Evening News and, in the U.S., write a syndicated column about interior design.

Although she wrote children’s stories and advice books, novels were her dream. “A Woman of Substance” was a multigenerational chronicle of the travails and triumphs of retail baron Emma Harte, who would be featured in several other Bradford novels.

The book has sold more than 30 million copies and was the basis of a 1984 television miniseries starring Jenny Seagrove as a young Emma and Deborah Kerr as Emma late in life.

“And if you want to meet the real Emma, meet me,” Bradford told the Telegraph of London in 2009. “Emma had to be tough and ruthless at times, but then so am I. I have to be, as a businesswoman. And I’m a bloody good businesswoman.”

Bradford and Emma Harte were linked by more than money: Both had family secrets.

As a young woman, Emma became pregnant by a man who refused to marry her and gave birth to a daughter. Years later, Bradford learned through her biographer that her own mother had been born out of wedlock.

It is now believed that Bradford’s maternal grandfather was Frederick Oliver Robinson, the second Marquess of Ripon and owner of the Studley Royal estate in Yorkshire, which is now a World Heritage Site.

Seagrove, who became friends with Bradford after starring in the miniseries, described her as a “powerhouse of glamour and warmth” and a “force of nature” who stayed true to her roots.

“Success never diluted her warmth and humor or her ability to relate to everyone she met, whether a cleaner or a princess,” Seagrove said.

“She never, ever forgot that she was just a girl from Yorkshire that worked hard and made good. RIP dear friend.”

Bradford had a strict writing routine: at work behind her IBM Lexmark typewriter by 6 a.m., break around 1 p.m., then back to writing until 6 p.m., at the latest.