Eloisa James, bestselling author, Shakespearean scholar and daughter of the poet Robert Bly, has set her plume to a decadent new series designed to delight historical-fiction fans, romance readers and anyone who likes modern-day classics.
The first of four novels that chronicle the lives and loves of four duchesses in the debauchery of England's Georgian period is "Desperate Duchesses" (Avon Books), which serves as a love letter to her own father.
James, known to English literature scholars as Mary Bly, professor and director of the English Graduate Program at Fordham University, is a Harvard, Oxford and Yale-educated expert of "pop" fiction through the ages. She incorporates poetry and Shakespearean references into her novels. People magazine has raved that romance writing does not get any better than hers.
The first book in the series is about Lady Roberta St. Giles, whose disreputable father has made it harder for her to find a husband. Nevertheless, she spies the man she would wed and uses chess to woo him. James describes the book as an homage to her father, who sometimes embarrassed her as an adolescent with his sheer exuberance and the fierceness of his love.
