Essie Summers

Essie Summers book covers were featured as part of a heritage romance cover display at the Auckland Central Library in 2013.

Summers died in Taradale, Hawkes Bay on 27 August 1998.

Despite the responsibilities of being a minister's wife and the mother of two children, Summers found time to pen short stories, poetry, and newspaper columns before embarking on her first novel, which sold to the publishing firm of Mills & Boon in 1956. Entitled New Zealand Inheritance, it was published in 1957.

Leaving school at 14 when her father's butcher shop experienced financial difficulties, she worked for a number of years in draper's shops instead of following her dream to be a teacher. Her first published work was a poem, titled Gypsy Heart. It appeared in 1931 in the Australian Woman’s Mirror when she was only eighteen. She received eight and sixpence for the poem, and by this stage had been writing poems and short stories for a decade. Continuing to submit poems, articles and short stories to magazines and newspapers, honing her skills, and even becoming a weekly columnist for the Timaru Herald, under the pen-name "Tamsin" for six years, her husband encouraged her to turn her experiences to good use in writing the romantic novels for which she became famous.

Essie Summers (born Ethel Snelson Summers, 24 July 1912 – 27 August 1998) was a New Zealand writer whose romance novels sold more than 19 million copies in 105 countries. She was known as New Zealand's "Queen of Romance."

Summers was born on 24 July 1912 to a newly emigrated couple, Ethel Snelson and Edwin Summers, who lived in Bordesley Street in Christchurch. Summers was always proud of both her British heritage and her New Zealand citizenship. Both her parents were exceptional storytellers, and this, combined with her early introduction to the Anne of Green Gables stories, engendered in her a lifelong fascination with the craft of writing and the colorful legacy of pioneers everywhere.