Mary Balogh
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Mary Balogh (born Mary Jenkins on 24 March 1944) is a Welsh-Canadian novelist writing historical romance, born and raised in Swansea. In 1967, she moved to Canada to start a teaching career, married a local coroner and settled in Kipling, Saskatchewan, where she eventually became a school principal. Her debut novel appeared in 1985. Her historical fiction is set in the Regency era (1811–1820) or the wider Georgian era (1714–1830).
Biography
Personal life
Mary Jenkins was born and raised in Swansea, Wales, daughter of Mildred Double, a homemaker, and Arthur Jenkins, a signwriter and painter. She moved to Canada on a two-year teaching contract in 1967 after leaving university. There, she met and married her Canadian husband Robert Balogh, a coroner and ambulance driver, and settled in the small prairie town of Kipling, Saskatchewan. She taught high-school English for a number of years, and rose to the level of school principal. She has three children and five grandchildren.<ref name="ContemporaryAuthors">Template:Citation</ref>
Writing career
As an adult, Balogh discovered the world of the Regency romance as written by Georgette Heyer.<ref name="FairclothSubgenre">Template:Cite news</ref> The vast majority of Balogh's novels have been set in Regency or Georgian England or Wales. Although she writes historical romances, Mary Balogh's heroines are often not "ladies". Some are courtesans, illegitimate, "fallen" or "ruined" women. All enjoy passion, and often a marriage and/or a sensual connection precedes recognition of love.
Balogh began her writing career in 1983, when she wrote her first novel A Masked Deception in the evenings at the kitchen table while home and family functioned around her. A Masked Deception was accepted by Signet and published in 1985. Mary Balogh won the Romantic Times Award for best new Regency writer in that year. She is the author of more than 60 published novels and over 30 novellas, and has been met with critical success.
Reception
Balogh has received numerous awards, including a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for Regency Short Stories in 1993 and has appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list.
Bibliography
Template:Columns-list *Reprinted in the 2003 anthology Under The Mistletoe with one new Mary Balogh novella A Family Christmas **Reprinted in the 2015 anthology "Christmas Gifts" – e-book only ***Reprinted in the 2015 anthology "Christmas Miracles" – e-book only
References and sources
External links
- 1944 births
- 20th-century Canadian educators
- Canadian women educators
- 20th-century Welsh educators
- 20th-century Welsh women educators
- 21st-century Welsh women educators
- 21st-century Welsh educators
- 20th-century Canadian novelists
- 20th-century Welsh novelists
- 21st-century Welsh novelists
- 21st-century Canadian novelists
- 20th-century Canadian women novelists
- 21st-century Canadian women novelists
- 20th-century Welsh women writers
- 21st-century Welsh women writers
- 21st-century Welsh writers
- Writers from Swansea
- Welsh women novelists
- Welsh historical novelists
- Welsh romantic fiction writers
- Canadian romantic fiction writers
- Writers of historical romances
- Welsh emigrants to Canada
- Living people
- Writers of historical fiction set in the early modern period
- Novelists from Saskatchewan
- 20th-century British women novelists
- 21st-century British women novelists