Sweet Valley High author Francine Pascal has died at the age of 92.
Her daughter Laurie Wenk-Pascal told the New York Times (NYT) she died of lymphoma at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan on Sunday.
Pascal found global success with the hit book series about identical twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, which was formative reading for generations of young girls.
The series, set in the fictional Los Angeles suburb of Sweet Valley, debuted in 1983 and consisted of 181 books, also spawning multiple spin-offs, including Sweet Valley Twins and Sweet Valley University.
Francine Pascal, a former soap-opera scriptwriter who conjured up an entire literary universe in her mega-best-selling “Sweet Valley High” series of young-adult novels, died on Sunday. She was 92. https://t.co/nJPAOBqi0d
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It ran for 20 years and was translated into 27 languages, selling hundreds of millions of copies worldwide.
Pascal wrote the first 12 books in the series and then, after drafting a detailed outline, worked with a team of writers to keep up a rapid publication pace, according to the NYT.
A Sweet Valley High TV series, starring real-life twins Cynthia and Brittany Daniel, ran for four series from 1994 to 1997.
Pascal got her start in writing after she married her second husband John Pascal a year after divorcing Jerome Offenberg, and the couple worked together on the 1960s soap opera The Young Marrieds.
In the 1970s she ventured into the world of young-adult novels with Hangin’ Out With Cici, My First Love And Other Disasters and The Hand-Me-Down Kid, and found that teenage girls were a receptive audience for her efforts.
Pascal also wrote several books for adults, including a non-fiction book about the Patty Hearst trial, The Strange Case Of Patty Hearst, in 1974.
She also penned adult novels Save Johanna! in 1981 and If Wishes Were Horses in 1994.
