A Perfect Marriage

Jean Saunders (1932-2011), was born in London, but lived in the West Country for almost all of her life. She was married to Geoff Saunders, her childhood sweetheart, with whom she had three children.

After the publication of her first novel, Jean began a career as a magazine writer and published around 600 short stories. She started to publish gothic romance novels under her married and maiden name in the 1970s. In the 1980s, she wrote historical romances under what would become her two most popular pseudonyms, Rowena Summers and Sally James. In 2004, she began to use the penname Rachel Moore.

In 1991 Saunders's novel, The Bannister Girls, was shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year award. She was elected the seventeenth Chairman (1993-1995) of the Romantic Novelists' Association, and she was Vice-Chairman of the Writers' Summer School of Swanwick. She was also a member of Romance Writers of America, the Crime Writers' Association and the West Country Writers' Association.