Eloisa James

Eloisa James is Mary Bly, a professor of Shakespeare at Fordham University and the daughter of the poets Robert Bly and Carol Bly, and she kept the two careers separate for years because a romance pen name was no asset in an English department. The novels are Regency, funny, and unusually well furnished with period detail, which is what a Renaissance scholar brings to the job. The Wildes of Lindow Castle run to seven books, Wilde in Love and Wilde Child among them; Fool for Love belongs to the earlier Duchess quartet. Lizzie and Dante leaves the period altogether for contemporary fiction about illness and Italy, and draws on her own treatment.