Bio

Sarah MacLean is the author of The Season, a historical novel set in early 19^th Century England which Kirkus Reviews hailed for its "lively characters," "historical context and historical detail," and its "fun and unrestrained take on a buttoned-up era."

As the daughter of a former British spy and a jet-setting Italian who met in Paris and lived, at one point or another, in Rome, London, San Francisco, and New York, Sarah spent her youth on both sides of the Atlantic-spending school years in Rhode Island and summers in Europe-and falling in love with the rich history of the world.
By high school, Sarah had become thoroughly obsessed with historical fiction. She would become enamored of whole eras of history and read any- and everything she could get her hands on. She went through phases-the Civil War, Medieval England, the Vikings, the Italian Renaissance. 

And then she found Jane Austen. As Sarah says, "here was an author--a woman no less!-- who went against everything that had been written before and who birthed a genre of literature. Austen cast aside the melodramatic gothic romance that was so popular during the time, and made literature fun . . . and funny . . . and real. Her heroines were cheeky and ironic, her heroes dark and brooding and arrogant to a fault." The combination of the two for the teenaged MacLean was electric.

That's when Sarah discovered Regency England. "This was a phase I never grew out of. I spent much of my teenage years, nose buried in historical romances, bemoaning the fact that I was born two centuries too late to enter the swirling beau monde that waltzed its way through the glittering ballrooms of London. Is it any wonder that when I finally put pen to paper, I wrote a book about the Regency?"

Attending Smith College, Sarah amassed a group of friends who shared her love of historical fiction. There, she majored in history and somewhere along the way learned a rhyme that lists the Kings and Queens of England in order, which she claims, "will someday endear me to strangers at a dinner party or help me to win Jeopardy!" 

After graduating, Sarah moved to New York, where she took a job in publishing before returning to school to get a graduate degree in Education at Harvard University.

Sarah currently lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, their dog, and "an unfathomably large collection of regency fiction that fills my bookshelves to bursting."

"And now, I'm happy to say that, through writing, I have the chance to put my crazy, eclectic life to good use and, while I may never be able to live up to the British spy and the jet-setting Italian, my characters are certainly making a go of it!"