María del Socorro Tellado López was born in the village of
Viavélez, and she was the only girl of five siblings. Her mother was a housewife and her father was a naval mechanic in the
Merchant Navy. In 1939, after the
Spanish Civil War, her father was promoted to First Officer and the whole family moved to
Cádiz. Her love for literature began when she attended a catholic school which was run by nuns. Her father died in 1945 and the family started to have economic problems; she sold her first novel,
Atrevida apuesta, to the publishing house
Editorial Bruguera in 1946 for 3,000
pesetas, but they rejected her second novel. She continued to write for and to be published by Editorial Cies and Editorial Bruguera; she also started to study
psychology, but did not finish her studies because Editorial Bruguera contracted her to write one short novel every week. In 1948 she went back to
Asturias with her mother, where she started publishing a different short novella every two weeks in Latin American magazine
Vanidades. She claimed that she was able to write a short novel in two days. She married Domingo Egusquizaga Sangroniz in 1959 in
Covadonga and one year later she gave birth to her first child, her daughter Begoña Egusquizaga Tellado; in 1961 she gave birth to her second child, her son Domingo Egusquizaga Tellado. In 1962, the couple separated, but never divorced. In 1962
UNESCO declared her the most read Spanish writer after
Miguel de Cervantes, and Editorial Bruguera offered her an exclusive contract to write. She would later have problems with Editorial Bruguera, because they republished some of her novels under a different title without her permission. She started to write for Editorial Rollán, but in 1973 Editorial Bruguera filed a lawsuit against her and won, and she had to pay them compensation, in addition to returning to work for them. Her last works for Editorial Buguera were erotic novels under the pen name of Ada Leswy or Ada Miller Leswy. She also published some children's books in collaboration with Jesús Zantón Santiago, and her favorite novel was
Lucha oculta (1991), her first long work. Corín Tellado was listed in the 1994
Guinness World Records as having sold the most books written in Spanish. She died on 11 April 2009 in her home as a result of a stroke. She left three unpublished novels. Her novels continue to be reedited in digital format. ==Selected bibliography==