Judith Harkness

Judith Harkness, the daughter of a US diplomat, spent her childhood in Latin America and Europe before returning to the US to attend Milton Academy and study English and Theater at Brown University. Her love of history and literature grew together as her childhood was spent immersed in a variety of fascinating cultures. "My father was a historian who studied with Samuel Eliot Morrison before he entered the Foreign Service, and my mother an artist, so wherever we lived, we traveled widely, learned the language, and made lots of friends. I later got bitten by the acting bug, working with small English theater groups in the countries we lived, and that is how I eventually went into the professional theater." After several years working as an actress in New York-- "off more than on" -- she turned her love of fiction, especially the work of Jane Austen, into a new career, publishing five regency romances. She is thrilled that they are being reissued this month by Argo as both e-books and in print, with beautiful new covers, designed by her son, Nick Richardson. She lives with her husband in southern Rhode Island, where she gardens, walks her dog, and sees as much theater as possible when she is not writing.