Fonds STU - Vivian Stuart papers

Violet Vivian Finlay was born in Berkshire, England on 2 January 1914. She was the daughter of Alice Kathleen (née Norton) and Sir Campbell Kirkman Finlay, the owner and director of Burmah Oil Company Ltd., whose Scottish family also owned James Finlay and Company Ltd. The majority of her childhood and youth was spent in Rangoon, Burma (now also known as Myanmar), where her father worked.

Finlay married four times and bore five children, Gillian Rushton (née Porch), Kim Santow, Jennifer Gooch (née Stuart), and twins Vary and Valerie Stuart.

Following the dissolution of her first marriage, she studied for a time Law in London in the mid 1930s, before decided studied Medicine at the University of London. Later she spent time in Hungary in the capacity of private tutor in English, while she obtained a pathologist qualification at the University of Budapest in 1938. In 1939, she emigrated to Australia with her second husband, a Hungarian Doctor Geza Santow with whom she worked. In 1942, she obtained a diploma in industrial chemistry and laboratory technique at Technical Institute of Newcastle. Having earned an ambulance driver's certificate, she joined the Australian Forces at the Women's Auxiliary Service during World War II. She 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 war she returned to England.

She published her first novels in 1953. She signed her romantic fiction as Vivian Stuart, one of her married names, and under the pen names of Alex Stuart, Barbara Allen, Fiona Finlay and Robyn Stuart, while for her military sagas, 'Alexander Sheridan Saga' and 'Phillip Hazard Saga' she used the name V.A. Stuart, and William Stuart Long was her pen name for the popular historical series: 'Australians', based on her research at The Mitchell Library Sydney; The National Maritime Museum; British Public Records Office and the New York Public Library.

Many of her romance novels were protagonized by doctors or nurses, and set in Asia, Australia or other places she had visited. Her novel, 'Gay Cavalier' (1955 as Alex Stuart) caused trouble between Vivian and her Mills & Boon editors. She featured a secondary story line featuring a Catholic male and Protestant female who chose to marry. This so-called 'mixed marriage' outraged many people in the United Kingdom at the time.

On 24 October 1958, she married her fourth and last husband, Cyril William Mann, an investment banker.

In 1960, she was a founder of the Romantic Novelists' Association, along with Denise Robins, Barbara Cartland, and others; she was elected the first Chairman. In 1970, she became the first woman to chair Swanwick writers' summer school.

Violet Vivian Mann died in 1986 in York, at age 72. She continued writing until her death.