Vivian V.A. Stuart was a renowned English novelist, born as Violet Vivian Finlay on January 2, 1914, in Berkshire, England. She is famous for her works in romance, historical fiction, and military novels. Over her long and prolific career, she used multiple pen names to write in different genres, including Alex Stuart, Fiona Finlay, V.A. Stuart, Vivian Stuart, Barbara Allen, Robyn Stuart, and William Stuart Long. These pseudonyms were used to cover romantic novels, military sagas, and historical sagas.
Vivian began her writing career in 1953 and remained an established author until her death in 1986. She was born into a family of means, with her father being the owner and director of Burmah Oil Company Ltd. and the owner of James Finlay and Company Ltd. Vivian spent the majority of her childhood and youth in Rangoon, Burma, and frequently traveled between India, Singapore, Java, and Sumatra. She was well-educated, studying Law in London in the mid-1930s before switching to Medicine at the University of London. She also obtained a pathologist qualification at the University of Budapest in 1938.
Vivian married four times and had five children. Following her first marriage, she studied Law in London, then Medicine at the University of London. She worked as a private tutor in English in Hungary and obtained a pathologist qualification at the University of Budapest in 1938. She emigrated to Australia with her second husband, a Hungarian Doctor Geza Santow, and worked with him. In 1942, she obtained a diploma in industrial chemistry and laboratory technique at Technical Institute of Newcastle. She joined the Australian Forces at the Women's Auxiliary Service during World War II, was attached to the IVth Army, and raised to the rank of sergeant. She was posted to British XIV Army in Rangoon, Burma in October 1945, and was then transferred to Sumatra in December. After the WWII, she returned to England. On 24 October 1958, she married her fourth and last husband, Cyril William Mann, a bank manager.
Vivian was a prolific writer from 1953 to 1986 under different pseudonyms, including Vivian Stuart, Alex Stuart, Barbara Allen, Fiona Finlay, V. A. Stuart, William Stuart Long, and Robyn Stuart. Many of her novels featured doctors or nurses and were set in Asia, Australia, or other places she had visited. She was a founder of the Romantic Novelists' Association in 1960, along with Denise Robins, Barbara Cartland, and others, and was elected the first Chairman (1961-1963). In 1970, she became the first woman to chair Swanwick Writers' Summer School. Vivian V.A. Stuart passed away in August 1986 in Yorkshire, at the age of 72, but she continued writing until her death. Her romance novel, Gay Cavalier, published in 1955 as Alex Stuart, got her into trouble with her Mills & Boon editors when she featured a secondary storyline featuring a Catholic male and Protestant female who chose to marry, which touched nerves in the United Kingdom.