Jean S. MacLeod

Jean Sutherland MacLeod Walton
Born Jane Sutherland MacLeod
20 January 1908
Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Died 11 April 2011 (aged 103)
Yorkshire, England, UK
Pen name Jean S. MacLeod,
Catherine Airlie
Occupation Novelist
Language English
Nationality British
Period 1936–96
Genre Romance
Spouse Lionel Walton (1935–95)
Children 1

Jean S. MacLeod (20 January 1908 – 11 April 2011) was a prolific British writer of over 130 romance novels from 1936 to 1996, she also used the pseudonym of Catherine Airlie.

Biography

Personal life

Born Jane Sutherland MacLeod on 20 January 1908 in Glasgow, Scotland,[1][2] the daughter of Elizabeth Allen and John MacLeod. She was actually named Jane, but her grandfather complained it was not Scottish enough, and it was changed to Jean. Her father, who was a civil engineer, moved her family with jobs. Her education began at Bearsden Academy, continued in Swansea and ended in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.[3]

She worked in a sweet shop. She moved to North Yorkshire, England to marry with Major Lionel Walton on 1 January 1935,[2][4] an electricity board executive, who died in 1995.[3] They had a son, David Walton, who died two years before her. She died on 11 April 2011 in Yorkshire, England, at 103 years of age.

Writing career

MacLeod started writing stories for the magazine The People's Friend, before sold her first romance novel in 1936. She wrote contemporary romances, most of them were set in her native Scotland, or in exotic places like Spain or Caribbean, places that she normally visited for documented. From 1948 to 1965, she also published under the pseudonym of Catherine Airlie. She was the first author published in the Mills & Boon Romance Series. In 2009, at 101, MacLeod was interviewed by a Daily Mail reporter, while she was starting her 130th book for Mills & Boon.[2]

MacLeod was member of the Romantic Novelists' Association, where she met the mediatic writer Barbara Cartland, who was not too friendly.

Bibliography

As Jean S. MacLeod

As Catherine Airlie

References and sources

  1. ↑ Kay, Ernest (1989), The International Authors and Writers Who's Who, International Biographical Centre, p. 1017
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Britain's oldest romantic novelist to spend 101st birthday working on her 130th Mills & Boon book, 26 October 2012
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Jean MacLeod, who died on April 20 aged 103, was Britain's oldest romantic novelist and claimed to have written no fewer than 130 novels for Mills & Boon, 26 October 2012
  4. ↑ The Author's & Writer's Who's who = Burke's Peerage, 1963