Jessica Steele

Jessica Steele (1933-2020) was an English romantic novelist who wrote 88 novels for Mills & Boon and Harlequin over three decades, from The Icicle Heart in 1979 to The Girl From Honeysuckle Farm in 2009. She was born in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, on 9 May 1933 and died on 23 November 2020, aged 87. Jessica Steele was a pen name; Encyclopedia.com indexes her as Marcia Steele (Glennys Howell).

She left school at 14 after a tuberculosis diagnosis, later worked as a clerk, bookkeeper and civil servant, and married her husband Peter in 1967. She became a full-time writer in 1978, after about five years of rejected manuscripts, and that year IPC Magazines issued short novels such as Engaging Loyalty under her own name. Her novels, many of them office romances, were published in Britain by Mills & Boon and in North America as Harlequin Romances, and she travelled widely, to Hong Kong, China, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Russia, Egypt, Chile and Greece among other places, to research their settings. Spring Girl followed as a Harlequin Romance in October 1979.

For collectors, The Icicle Heart (Harlequin Romance 2297, March 1979), her first novel as Jessica Steele, is the natural starting point. Because some titles came out from both Mills & Boon and Harlequin (Hostage to Dishonour appeared from Mills & Boon in 1979 and Harlequin in 1980), the publisher and series number are the details to check when identifying the original British edition.