Violet Winspear

Violet Winspear (1928-1989) was an English romance novelist who wrote around seventy novels for Mills & Boon and Harlequin between 1961 and 1987 and was one of the launch authors of the Harlequin Presents line.

Born in London on 28 April 1928, she sold her first novels to Mills & Boon in 1961, beginning with Lucifer's Angel, and became a full-time writer in 1963. She lived and wrote in south-east England and never married. Her novels were known for dark, dangerous heroes and settings such as Greece, as titles like Dragon Bay (1969), Bride of Lucifer (1971) and Devil in a Silver Room (1973) suggest. In 1973 she was chosen, with Anne Mather and Anne Hampson, to launch Harlequin Presents. Other books include The Honey Is Bitter (1967), Forbidden Rapture (1973), Dearest Demon (1975), Desire Has No Mercy (1979), Secret Fire (1984) and A Silken Barbarity (1987).

A 1970 interview in which she said her heroes had to be men capable of rape provoked an outcry and brought her hate mail. She died in January 1989 after a long illness with cancer.

For collectors

Lucifer's Angel (1961) is her first book and the natural starting point for a collection, and her early Harlequin Presents numbers from 1973, such as Devil in a Silver Room (number 5), date from the launch of that line. Her books were sold to Mills & Boon in Britain and appeared in North America in Harlequin's numbered Romance and Presents series, often some years apart: The Honey Is Bitter, for example, is dated 1967 in her bibliography but was Harlequin Presents number 6 in 1973.