Anne Weale

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Biography

Anne Weale authored nearly 90 novels, starting with her debut novel Winter Is Past, a story that notably captures the passion felt by the characters while never slipping into overtly sexual writing. Her writing career began in 1955. She also wrote single title romance. Anne Weale passed away on October 24, 2007.

Weale, whose real name was Jay Blakeney, built on the legacy of authors such as Rosalind Brett (Lilian Warren), who emphasized intense sexual tension in her work. Blakeney/Weale, though she believed her writing was tame compared to younger authors, maintained her position as an author who pushed the boundaries of sexuality in her work throughout her Mills & Boon career. In fact, the author treated readers to what is believed to be the first oral sex scene in her M&B title Antigua Kiss, published in 1982. Weale also wrote a masturbation scene in her novel Ecstasy, published in 1983. (Note 1)

The author was well-known for her strong settings, information she often gained from her travels. The novels comprising the "Longwarden" series - Flora, All My Worldly Goods and Time & Chance - were among the favorites of Weale. Her last novel, published in 2002 was The Man From Madrid. Weale was also a founding member of the Romantic Novelists Association.

Blakeney/Weale was a trained journalist who retired from reporting when her fiction income -- a combination of amounts earned as a Mills & Boon author and writing for magazines such as Woman's Illustrated, which serialized the work of authors -- exceed 1,000 pounds a year (Note 2). The author, who sold her first work to the publisher in 1955 at the age of 24, was a full-time fiction writer before she was thirty.

Many of the editorial policies in place in today's Category titles find their roots in the practices developed by Mills & Boon. For example, the use of proper names, including brand names, was carefully vetted by Joan Bryant. Blakeney/Weale learned firsthand of the dangers of using real names when a co-worker complained to the publisher about the use of his name for one of her characters in her debut novel Winter Is Past. Blakeney/Weale, though pleading innocence, eventually changed the character name and stated publicly that there was no connection between the fictional character and the real man. Interestingly, the man in question was more concerned with being "teased" about appearing in the novel than with the novel's content. (Note 3)

Weale continued to innovate even in the age of the Internet. She wrote a regular website review column for The Bookseller from 1998 to 2004, a UK publication, before starting her own blog Bookworm on the Net. Her final post is an apology for the lack of posts due to technology problems. She was working on her autobiography 88 Heroes...1 Mr. Right at the time of her death.

She wrote twenty books for Harlequin Presents, mainly during the 1980s before moving to the Tender line. Writing for the Harlequin Romance imprint, she published 42 novels. Weale also wrote under the name Andrea Blake.

  • Note 1 - McAleer, Joseph. Passion's Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon (Oxford University Press, 1999), 288.
  • Note 2 - ------. Passion's Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon (Oxford University Press, 1999), 228.
  • Note 3 - ------. Passion's Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon (Oxford University Press, 1999), 223.

Books

On The Web

Articles/Interviews/Remembrances

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