Mary Ellen Johnson

Her passion for Medieval England sparked Mary Ellen Johnson’s writing career. Her first medieval historical, The Lion and the Leopard, was followed by The Landlord’s Black-Eyed Daughter, a historical novel based on the Alfred Noyes poem, “The Highwayman.” (Published under the pseudonym, Mary Ellen Dennis.) Landlord was chosen as one of the top 100 historical romances of 2013. After taking a twenty-year detour in a quixotic quest to change the world—rather like Arthurian knights’ quests to find the holy grail, which ended in similar failure—Mary Ellen has happily returned to historical fiction writing and her favorite time period, the tumultuous fourteenth century. Her six-book series, Knights of England, follows the fortunes of the characters (and their progeny) introduced in The Lion and the Leopard through the Black Death, the reign of that most gloriously medieval of monarchs, Edward III, the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, and ends with the deposition and murder of Richard II in 1399. There is nothing Mary Ellen loves more than bringing Medieval England alive for the reader. She particularly enjoys researching battles, campaigns, the daily lives of both lord and peasant, and trying to figure out our ancestors’ thought processes, particularly how they viewed their world. Oh, and did she mention the castles and cathedrals? Mary Ellen likes to say her favorite place in the world is standing before the tomb of the Black Prince in Canterbury Cathedral. (Hyperbole, of course, since Mary Ellen is not that well-traveled and her favorite places are probably wherever her kids and grandkids reside.)