Jo Beverley

Jo Beverley (b.1947) is a prolific British-Canadian writer of popular medieval, Regency and Georgian romance novels.

Bold in her constant stretching of the genre’s boundaries, Beverley established a reputation for her well-researched works filled with salient and unusual historical details and peopled by communities of interlinked characters. Her works have been translated into many languages and have won her many awards including five RITAs, two Career Achievement Awards from Romantic Times, The Golden Leaf Award and the Readers’ Choice Award. A member of the Romance Writers of America (RWA) Honor Roll, Beverley is the sole Canadian romance author inducted into the RWA Hall of Fame.

Influence on the Romance genre

Initially published as a writer of traditional Regencies, Beverley is instrumental in injecting new vigor into these short novels based on the ordered workings of the mannered English social world. Her works helped develop the romance genre by promoting the male point of view, encouraging the strong heroine and extending the level of acceptable sensuality. Such innovation was essential to the creation and subsequent shaping of a racier subgenre of romance known as the Regency historical. This longer novel involved a deeper exploration of relationships, explicit sexual content suited to marriage and wilder, more dramatic scenarios that moved beyond the confines of the traditional Regency novels of propriety. One of the few romance writers to explore the Georgian world, Beverley also helped popularize the series format which allows readers to revisit characters as they grow and influence each other.

Biographical Information

Mary Josephine Dunn was the youngest of four girls born to Mildred Carr and John Dunn on 22 September 1947 in a room overlooking Morecambe Bay in Lancashire, England. Raised in a family of readers, Dunn was diffident towards creative writing until, at the age of eleven, she went to an all-girls boarding school at Layton Hill Convent in Blackpool. There, at sixteen years of age, Dunn wrote her first romance, a medieval, which was completed in installments in an exercise book. Although her initial proclivity was for art school, Dunn eventually chose to read History and American Studies at Keele University in Staffordshire from 1966-1970. The broad-based learning of Keele’s Foundation Year and the availability of archived Regency-period newspapers further added to her “toolbox” for writing fiction. However, Dunn still saw writing as an “occult art” that ordinary mortals did not aspire to as a profession.

On 24 June 1971, Dunn married Ken Beverley, whom she met at Keele. As a leading-age boomer she quickly attained a position as a youth employment officer after graduation. Beverley stayed in her one and only profession from 1971-1976, working first in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, and then in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire.

In 1976, Beverley moved to Canada where her scientist husband was invited to do post-doctoral research at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When her professional qualifications did not translate, Beverley decided to develop her early interest in creative writing. Many of her Rogue characters were created in this initial manuscript entitled A Regency Rape. At this point, Beverley did not have a fixed idea of the narrower literary boundaries drawn by the traditional Regency and thus created a literary hybrid. A precursor of the Regency historical, the work had a more varied cast of characters which, while respectful of the world of Georgette Heyer, broadened the scope and intensity of the genre. After a “feeble attempt” to publish her work, she devoted her time to caring for her two young sons and participating in a woman-centered childbirth movement which made her especially careful to portray births in her novels realistically but positively.

The turning point in Beverley’s writing career came when her move to Montreal led to her attendance at a talk on “The state of romance in fiction” by Janet Adams at Beaconsfield Library on 23 May 1984. The Executive Advisor of Writers Association for Romance and Mainstream demystified the creative process for the budding author and was sufficiently impressed by Beverley’s writing to act as her agent. That same year, the family moved to Ottawa where Beverley became a founding member of the Ottawa Romance Writers’ Association. Formed in 1985, ORWA became her “nurturing community” for the next twelve years.

In 1988, Beverley, who was actively writing science fiction as well as romance, was a finalist in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. That same year, she sold her first romance novel and with her ensuing success in the genre, speculative writing was allowed to slide, though elements of it appear periodically in some of her romances.

The Novels

Lord Wraybourne’s Betrothed was published in 1989 and won immediate acclaim as one of the best Regency novels of the year. Featuring a unique subplot involving a serial rapist villain, Beverley’s offering of the “traditional Regency in the approved mode” explores the journey into love of a by-the-book gentleman and his sheltered fiancée. This is the first of her traditional Regency novels exploring Randal Ashby’s group of friends who appear in her subsequent four publications. Beverley’s The Stanforth Secrets was listed in 1989’s Best Regency Intrigues. This prequel to Lord Wraybourne’s Betrothed is a mystery involving French spies, apples, potatoes and a missing list. Lauded by Romantic Times as the best new Regency Author in 1989, Beverley’s next publication, The Stolen Bride (1990), features Sophie and Randal Ashby, Wraybourne’s sister and best friend respectively.

In 1991, Beverley participated in a shared project A Regency Valentine to which she contributed “If Fancy be the Food of Love,” and the character of Randal’s brother, the Marquess of Chelmly, whose story was told by co-author Kitty Grey. That same year, Beverley published Emily and the Dark Angel (1991) which garnered several accolades including a RITA for Best Regency and a Romantic Times Award for Best Regency Rake. In this winning tale set in Melton country, Beverley draws on her theory that it is horses and not ladies that were the Regency male’s true passion. The reader follows the unlikely but mutually liberating love of the infamous, emotionally volatile rake Piers Vanderan and his gallant and sensible spinster heroine.

Despite her success in the traditional Regency, Beverley had been drawn to write more complex stories that reflect the Regency period as a time of transition between the amoral excess of the Georgian world and the moralistic Victorian age. Stepping away from the proper, civilized gentlemen hero, Beverley created an untamed “Regency blood” in the form of Lucien de Vaux, the Marquess of Arden. While preparing to send out An Unwilling Bride for consideration, Beverley reworked A Regency Rape into An Arranged Marriage which follows the “baroque adventures” of Nicholas Delaney. She also integrated Lucien into Nicholas’ Company of Rogues, an eclectic brotherhood of twelve young men.

An Arranged Marriage (1991) was eventually published as a Zebra Regency despite its genre-busting content comprising of rape, an adulterous hero, homosexuality and drug usage. While married to a woman his brother had raped, Nicholas is asked by his government to seduce and distract his ex-mistress, Thérèse Bellaire. Both commoner and “King Rogue,” Nicholas is a complex character whose creation was influenced by Beverley’s admiration for historical novelist Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles. Beverley’s next offering The Fortune Hunter (1991) is a humorous dissection of marriage rituals featuring the beautiful and intelligent Amy de Lacy as the one in need of marrying a fortune. Also in 1991, Beverley’s first Christmas novella “Twelfth Night” was published in A Christmas Delight.

Borrowing a plot from an early short story “The Duke’s Solution,” Beverley matches Lucien, hero of An Unwilling Bride (1992), with a bluestocking bride. Beth is a teacher at Miss Mallory’s School for Ladies, an institution which links many of the female characters in the series. Lucien is forced to tolerate Beth when he discovers that through a series of mishaps, she is the only surviving bloodline of the duke to whom he is the acknowledged son and heir. This RITA and multiple award winner features one of Beverley’s favorite couples who learn to navigate the shoals of gender inequality while pursuing a marriage of equal minds and loving hearts. Christmas Angel (1992) matches Leander Knollis, Rogue, earl and professional wanderer with an older woman. Judith Rossiter is a poverty-stricken widow with two young children, who fits Leander’s newfound wish for a “ready-made family” (20). Also published in 1992 is Lord of My Heart Beverley’s first published medieval and significantly, her first novel published as a historical. Set in the brutal, politically volatile world that followed the Norman Conquest, the convent-bred heiress-heroine is compelled to marry in order to save her mismanaged barony. That same year, Beverley also published “Lord Samhain’s Night” in All Hallow’s Eve, an anthology featuring Regency, science fiction and fantasy writers.

Company of Rouges

From Jo Beverley's website ([1])

"The Company of Rogues came about (fictionally speaking) when Nicholas and the rest turned up at Harrow School. Schools in those days were almost anarchical places. A few years previous, Byron had led an armed revolt against the masters, and there was one incident of students blowing in a door to get at a tyrannical master. In addition to the master, always armed with birch and cane, the senior boys lorded it over the junior ones who had to act as servants, or fags. This often moved into abuse such as dragging younger boys around, scorching them at fires, and of course, beatings, since school chaos left the older boys in charge. Nicholas took one look at things and decided to create a small area of civilization. He gathered twelve new boys according to his own gifted whim, and formed a brotherhood of protection. They were not to bully others, or avoid proper duties or deserved punishment, but they would oppose oppression from all quarters. Most bullies and tyrants soon learned to leave them alone. Two members were already dead when book time started in 1814."

Suggested reading order for the Company of Rogues Series:

An Arranged Marriage (Nicholas & Eleanor's story)

An Unwilling Bride (Lucien and Beth's story)

Christmas Angel (Leander & Judith's story)

Forbidden (Francis & Serena's story)

Dangerous Joy (Miles & Felicity's story)

Dragon's Bride (Con & Susan's story) (also The George's story 2)

Hazard (Race & Lady Anne's story)

St. Raven (Tristan & Cressida's story)

Skylark (Stephen & Laura's story)

The Rouge's Return (Simon & Jane's story)

To Rescue a Rouge (Darius & Mara's story)

All of these novels can stand alone, but it is a much richer experience to read them in order, as most of the characters play vital roles in all of the books.

There is a tie-in series that involves Con Somerford & two of his friends. Sometimes these books are refered to as The Georges, as all three chracters have the first name George. Those books are:

Demon's Mistress (Van & Maria's story)

Dragon's Bride (Con & Susan's story

Devil's Heiress (Hawk & Clarissa's story)

Con is a Rogue, and Clarissa is a character from An Unwilling Bride. These three stories have been reissued in the trade paperback omnibus Three Heroes.

External links

• Jo Beverley's Website

• Secrets of the Author - Jo Beverley On The Mallorens and Writing