Jo Beverley
| Jo Beverley | |
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Jo Beverley at the Romance Writer's of America Literacy signing, July 22, 2015, New York, NY
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| Born | Mary Josephine Dunn 22 September 1947 Blackpool, Lancashire, England, UK |
| Died | 23 May 2016 (aged 68) England, UK |
| Pen name | Jo Beverley |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Language | English language |
| Nationality | British |
| Citizenship | Canada |
| Period | 1988–2016 |
| Genre | historical Romance, contemporary Romance |
| Spouse | Ken Beverley |
| Children | 2 |
| Website | |
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Mary Josephine "Jo" Beverley (née Dunn; 22 September 1947 – 23 May 2016) was a prolific English-Canadian writer of historical and contemporary romance novels from 1988 to 2016.
Her works are regarded as well researched, filled with historical details, and peopled by communities of interlinked characters, stretching the boundaries of the historical romantic fiction genre. They have been translated into several languages, and she has received multiple awards.
Mary Josephine Dunn was born 22 September 1947 in Lancashire, England. She was of Irish descent.
At age 11, she went to an all-girls boarding school, Layton Hill Convent, Blackpool. At 16, she wrote her first romance, with a medieval setting, completed in instalments in an exercise book. She read history and American studies at Keele University in Staffordshire from 1966 to 1970, where she earned a degree in English history. The broad-based learning of Keele's foundation year and the availability of archived Regency-period newspapers were useful resources to enable her to develop her fiction writing.
On 24 June 1971, she married Ken Beverley, whom she met at Keele.
After graduation, she quickly attained a position as a youth employment officer. She stayed in this profession until 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 proved unusable in the Canadian labour market, Beverley decided to develop her early interest in creative writing.
Many of her "Rogue" characters were created in an 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 romantic novel and thus created a literary hybrid. A precursor of the Regency historical novel, 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. At this time Beverley was still unpublished, but devoted her time to caring for her two young sons and participating in the woman-centred childbirth movement, which made her especially careful to portray births in her novels realistically but positively.
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