Eloisa James

Eloisa James is the internationally bestselling author of books as disparate as the memoir Paris in Love and the historical romance The Ugly Duchess—but she is also the Shakespeare scholar and professor Mary Bly, whose degrees stem from Harvard, Oxford, and Yale. With over 3.5 million books in print (including an academic study published by Oxford University Press), her books have been published in over 23 countries, from Thailand to Croatia.

Eloisa has engaged audiences worldwide with lectures animated by her humor and intelligence at venues that range from universities, to libraries, book festivals (she was the first romance writer invited to speak at the National Book Festival), Jane Austen societies, and charity functions. In 2009, for example, she gave a keynote address at the annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America—and then gave one to the Romance Writers of America a few months later. In 2010 she gave a plenary address to the German Shakespeare Association’s annual meeting, and 2012, she keynoted the Australian Romance Writers convention, followed by New Zealand’s counterpart.

In addition to her formidable professional credentials, Eloisa comes from a family of writers. She is the daughter of poet Robert Bly (winner of the American Book Award for Poetry) and short story author Carol Bly. Her godfather was the poet James Wright, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his Collected Poems. Among those poems – and one of Wright's most beloved – is a poem written for his goddaughter, Mary Bly (aka Eloisa James).