Easy Steps to Successful Decorating

by Barbara Taylor Bradford

.

Genres: Interior Design

Hardcover

First published October 29, 1971

About the author

Barbara Taylor Bradford was a British-American novelist whose dramatic family sagas and stories of ambitious women made her one of the most commercially successful authors of modern popular fiction. Raised in Leeds, she developed an early love of reading and decided as a child that she would become a writer. After leaving school at sixteen, she began her career in journalism, first working in the typing pool of the Yorkshire Evening Post before becoming a reporter. In her early twenties she moved to London, where she built a successful career as a fashion editor for Woman's Own magazine and later wrote widely syndicated newspaper columns. Although she experimented with suspense fiction, her breakthrough came with the novel A Woman of Substance in 1979, a sweeping story of a determined young woman rising from poverty to great success. The novel became an international bestseller and launched a long series of novels featuring strong female protagonists who achieve success through perseverance, ambition, and business skill. Over the following decades she wrote forty novels translated into dozens of languages and sold in tens of millions of copies worldwide. Several of her books were adapted for television miniseries and films, further expanding her readership. Her work earned numerous honors, including appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her contribution to literature.

Reviews

[Priscilla King · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read this author's fiction, I prefer her nonfiction. The illustrations are a real nostalgia trip. The tips for deciding what you want in your home (or store or AirBNB) are timeless, beginning with the very practical (measure things, make scale drawings and move them around, decide what you have room to put where) and going on to convince readers that Bradford can help us select and arrange objects for whatever level of simplicity, luxury, or pure pretentiousness we want. There are lots of tips for identifying styles of furniture and decorative items that fit together for an historical period look. The focus is on sitting/living rooms, dining rooms, and guest bedrooms, with less attention to kitchens, bathrooms, and offices.