Jo Beverley

Jo Beverley (1947-2016) was an English-born Canadian author of historical romance, best known for her Company of Rogues and Malloren series, who won five RITA Awards and was inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame.

She was born Mary Josephine Dunn in Blackpool, Lancashire, on 22 September 1947, of Irish descent, and studied English history at Keele University from 1966 to 1970. She married Ken Beverley in 1971 and moved to Canada in 1976, where she was a founding member of the Ottawa Romance Writers' Association in 1985. She sold her first romance novel in 1988 and went on to write more than 40 novels and many novellas, both historical and contemporary. She returned to England in 2009 and died of cancer in a care home in Yorkshire on 23 May 2016, aged 68.

Her five RITA Awards were for Emily and the Dark Angel (1992), An Unwilling Bride (1993), My Lady Notorious and Deidre and Don Juan (both 1994) and Devilish (2001). She was the only Canadian inducted into the RWA Hall of Fame, and she also received two Romantic Times Career Achievement awards. Her series include the Company of Rogues, the Malloren books and the Georges novels.

For collectors. Interest centres on first printings of her five RITA-winning titles and on the opening books of the Company of Rogues and Malloren series.