Edith Layton grew up in Queens, New York, and worked as a freelance writer for newspapers and magazines before publishing her first novel, The Duke's Wager, with Signet/NAL. She won numerous awards, starting in 1984 with the Romantic Times Award for Best New Regency Author. Publishers Weekly called Edith Layton "one of romance's most gifted writers," and in 2004 she received the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for Romances Set in the British Isles. Married to her physician husband for 35 years, she had three children, and went on to publish over 30 novels and many more short stories.