V. C. Andrews

Cleo Virginia Andrews (June 6, 1923 – December 19, 1986), who wrote as Virginia C. Andrews or V. C. Andrews, was an American author. Her most famous work is *Flowers in the Attic* (1979), a novel that led to two film adaptations and four follow-up books. Although her publisher does not label her books as Young Adult, the young age of her main characters has kept them popular with teenage readers for many years. Following her death in 1986, a ghostwriter originally brought in to finish two incomplete projects has kept publishing new novels under her name.

Her fiction blends Gothic horror with family sagas, focusing on hidden family secrets and taboo, often incestuous love—frequently involving horrific events and sometimes a rags-to-riches arc. Her signature book, *Flowers in the Attic*, tells the story of four siblings who are smuggled into the attic of their wealthy, estranged, and deeply religious grandmother, where their mother keeps them prisoner. The books were so profitable that after Andrews died, her estate hired writer Andrew Neiderman to produce novels under her name. When the IRS reviewed her estate tax returns, it successfully argued that the name "V. C. Andrews" itself was a valuable commercial asset that should be counted in her estate’s value. Her novels have been translated into Czech, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Greek, Finnish, Hungarian, Swedish, Polish, Portuguese, Lithuanian, Chinese, Russian, Bulgarian, and Hebrew.

Andrews was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, the only daughter and youngest child of Lillian Lilnora (Parker), a telephone operator, and William Henry Andrews, a tool-and-die maker. She had two older brothers, William Jr. and Eugene. She grew up attending Southern Baptist and Methodist churches. As a teenager, she fell from a school stairwell and severely injured her back. Surgery to fix those injuries led to crippling arthritis, forcing her to use crutches and a wheelchair for most of her life. Despite this, she had shown early talent as an artist and completed a four-year correspondence course from home, becoming a successful commercial artist, illustrator, and portrait painter. After her father died in 1957, she used her art commissions to support the family.

Later in life, she turned to writing. Her first novel, *Gods of Green Mountain* (1972), was a science fiction story that went unpublished during her lifetime but was eventually released as an e-book in 2004. In 1975, she finished a manuscript for a novel she called *Flowers in the Attic*. "I wrote it in two weeks," she said. The manuscript was returned with a suggestion to "spice up" and expand the story. In later interviews, she claimed to have made the needed revisions in a single night. Published in 1979, the novel was an instant hit, reaching the top of bestseller lists in just two weeks. Every year after that until her death, she released a new novel, each earning her larger advances and a growing readership. By 1982, her horror novels had sold over 11 million copies.

"I think I tell a whopping good story. And I don't drift away from it a great deal into descriptive material," she said in *Faces of Fear* in 1985. "When I read, if a book doesn't hold my interest in what's going to happen next, I put it down and don't finish it. So I'm not going to let anybody put one of my books down and not finish it. My stuff is a very fast read." In a 1983 interview with *Twilight Magazine*, she was asked about critics' responses to her work. She answered, "I don't care what the critics say. I used to, until I found out that most critics are would-be writers who are just jealous because I'm getting published and they aren't. I also don't think that anybody cares about what they say. Nor should they care."

Andrews died of breast cancer on December 19, 1986, in Virginia Beach, Virginia. After her death, her family hired ghostwriter Andrew Neiderman to finish the manuscripts she had started. He completed the next two novels, *Garden of Shadows* and *Fallen Hearts*, which were published soon after. These two books are considered the last to carry the V. C. Andrews name and to be almost entirely written by Andrews herself.

The following books written by (and credited to) V. C. Andrews were published during her lifetime: *Flowers in the Attic* (1979), *Petals on the Wind* (1980), *If There Be Thorns* (1981), *My Sweet Audrina* (1982), *Seeds of Yesterday* (1984), *Heaven* (1985), and *Dark Angel* (1986). Two posthumous volumes were credited solely to V. C. Andrews but completed by Andrew Neiderman based on outlines, story fragments, or partially finished work: *Garden of Shadows* (1987) and *Fallen Hearts* (1988). All new "V. C. Andrews" work published after 1988, while credited solely to Andrews, is actually the work of Neiderman, under license from the V. C. Andrews estate. Neiderman has revisited some of Andrews' original characters and settings while also creating many new series that explore similar themes.

Andrews' first series of novels was published between 1979 and 1987. *Flowers in the Attic* and *Petals on the Wind* focus on the four Dollanganger siblings and the events that shattered their perfect life after a car accident kills their father and their eventual imprisonment in their grandparents' attic as their mother tries to win back the love of her dying, estranged father, who must not know of the existence of her four children. *Flowers in the Attic* tells of their incarceration at Foxworth Hall.