Mary Balogh is a highly acclaimed author, best known for her historical fiction novels. She was born as Mary Jenkins in 1944 in Swansea, Wales, UK. After completing her university education, she moved to Saskatchewan, Canada, to teach high school English on a two-year teaching contract in 1967. It was there that she met her Canadian husband, Robert Balogh, with whom she had three children.
Balogh began writing in the evenings as a hobby, and her first book, a Regency love story, was published in 1985 under the title A Masked Deception. Her writing career took off from there, and she eventually retired from teaching in 1988 to focus on her writing full-time. Since then, she has written more than seventy novels and almost thirty novellas, many of which have become bestsellers.
Balogh's novels are set during the Regency or Georgian period and often feature female lead characters who are lower class or not traditionally "lady-like." This is a departure from many historical romance novels, which often focus on high-born ladies. Balogh's work has been recognized with numerous awards, including Bestselling Historical of the Year from the Borders Group, a finalist in the Quill Awards, seven Waldenbooks Awards, two B. Dalton Awards, and a Romantic Times Lifetime Achievement Award.
Some of Balogh's most famous works include the New York Times bestselling Slightly Series, which follows the Bedwyn siblings, and the Simply Series, which follows four teachers at Miss Martin's School for Girls in Bath, England. Her writing has been praised for its emotional depth and complexity, as well as its historical accuracy and attention to detail. Balogh's novels continue to be popular with readers around the world, and she is widely regarded as one of the greatest historical fiction authors of all time.