Mazo de la Roche

Mazo de la Roche
Mazo de la Roche, December 18, 1927
Born	(1879-01-15)January 15, 1879 Newmarket, Ontario
Died	July 12, 1961(1961-07-12) (aged 82) Toronto, Ontario

Mazo de la Roche (January 15, 1879 – July 12, 1961), born Mazo Louise Roche in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, was the author of the Jalna novels, one of the most popular series of books of her time.

Mazo de la Roche was the only child of William Roche, a salesman, and Alberta (Lundy) Roche,who was a great-great-niece of David Willson, founder of the Children of Peace, through the latter's elder half-brother Hugh L. Willson. The family moved frequently during her childhood because of her mother's ill health and her father's many jobs, and she was a lonely child who became an avid reader and developed her own fictional world, "The Play," in which she created imaginary scenes and characters. She wrote her first short story at age 9.

One of the family's moves meant some years on a farm owned by a wealthy man who farmed as a hobby. There de la Roche began to develop her fictional world of rural that would become Jalna.

When she was seven, her parents adopted her orphaned younger cousin Caroline Clement, who joined in her fantasy world game and would become her lifelong companion. The two lived a fairly reclusive life; their relationship was not discussed widely in the press. In 1931 they adopted the two orphaned children of friends of theirs.

Before she became famous, she lived for five years in Sovereign House in Bronte which has been designated a historical building by the Bronte Historical Society. Mazo's "Whiteoaks Chronicles" figures into the term "Whiteoaks" which usually refers to the Oakville-Bronte area.

De la Roche had her first story published in 1902 in Munsey's Magazine but did not begin her writing career in earnest until after the death of her father. Her first two novels, Possession (1923) and Delight (1926), were romantic novels and earned her little in income or recognition.