American author Judith Krantz achieved astounding commercial success with her debut novel in 1978, Scruples. Like many of her subsequent bestsellers, Scruples was made into a television miniseries, and set the standard for what came to be called the "money/sex/power" novel. Krantz—and her successors in the genre, Jackie Collins and Barbara Taylor Bradford—in essence recreated the Cinderella story, chronicling a sympathetic heroine's quest toward personal fulfillment and abundant material wealth. Her books have sold millions of copies worldwide, but her spectacular success has also signified great shifts in the publishing world: she was one of the first writers of popular fiction to be marketed as a celebrity.

Krantz, born in the late 1920s, grew up in affluent surroundings on New York's Central Park West. Her father was an advertising executive who taught her how to write advertisement copy, and her mother...