Eloisa James

Bly's mother died from ovarian cancer. Collaborating with her publisher, Avon, an imprint of Harper Collins, she became a spokesperson, along with six other Avon Romance authors, in a program named K.I.S.S. and TEAL to increase awareness about the early symptoms of this disease. "Romance is read primarily by women, and ovarian cancer is a women’s disease. Avon and its authors are saying, “You are our readers, our women, and we want you to live long and healthy lives, so we are going to put the symptoms in the back of every one of these seven books.” We are looking out for our own readers. Almost everyone has been touched by ovarian cancer, whether by the death of a friend or a relative."

She is a tenured professor lecturing on William Shakespeare at Fordham University in New York City. She has served as Director of Graduate Studies in the English Department, as well as head of Fordham's Creative Writing Program and, in 2018-19, Associate Dean of Fordham College, Lincoln Center. She specializes in bawdy puns found in English boys’ plays written between 1600-1608. In addition to publishing an academic book with Oxford University Press, she has published an academic article on 17th-century drama in The Publications of the Modern Language Association.

In 2018, Apple Books included her novel, Too Wilde to Wed, on its list of 10 Best Books of 2018.

For several years Bly's second career remained a secret, and she disguised herself by wearing contacts instead of her normal glasses when she attended functions as Eloisa James. After her first The New York Times Bestseller in 2005, Bly realized that her readers liked her writing regardless of its genre, and that by keeping her identity a secret she was implying that she was ashamed of her work and of her readers. At a February 16, 2005 faculty meeting, Bly outed herself to her colleagues, revealing her alter ego and offering copies of her novels to her fellow professors. Once she had officially "come out", she submitted an op-ed to The New York Times defending the romance genre. She was invited to speak at the National Book Festival in 2012.

Eloisa James is the pen name of Mary Bly (born 1962). She is a tenured Shakespeare professor at Fordham University who also writes best-selling Regency and Georgian romance novels under her pen name. Her novels are published in 30 countries and have sold approximately 7 million copies worldwide. She also wrote a bestselling memoir about the year her family spent in France, Paris in Love.

Mary Bly was born in Minnesota in 1962, the daughter of Robert Bly, winner of the American Book Award for poetry, and Carol Bly, a short story author. She was the inspiration for her mother's essay "The Maternity Wing, Madison, Minnesota," which was published in the anthology Imagining Home: Writing From the Midwest. Her godfather, James Wright, wrote a poem especially for her, which he included in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Collected Poems. Bly has three younger siblings, Bridget, Noah, and Micah.

The inspiration for her novels comes in part from her academic career, as plays or facts discovered during her academic research often spark ideas for fictional plots. Her novels, which are set in England's Regency period (1811–1820) or Georgian period (1740-1837), often have references to Shakespeare or include pieces of 16th-century poetry or other tidbits she has found while researching her academic papers. As she spends much of her day teaching about or reading early British English, she feels that the language choices she makes in her novels are more authentic. Although Bly has attempted to write a contemporary romance, she chose not to finish the manuscript because of difficulty writing in a contemporary voice.