In a book club and starting to plan your reads for next year? Check out our 2025 picks.

Wendy Moore Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Wendy Moore

Wendy Moore

Wendy Moore Biography

Wendy Moore is a writer and journalist specializing in health and medical topics. She has a diploma in the History of Medicine from the Society of Apothecaries. Her first book, The Knife Man won the Medical Journalists' Association Consumer Book Award in 2005 and was highly commended in the British Medical Association's Medical Book Competition the same year. In 2007, the book was short-listed for the biennial Marsh Biography Award.

Her second book is Wedlock,a biography of Mary Eleanor Bowes, the Countess of Strathmore. Her third book, How to Create the Perfect Wife, which tells another amazing true story from the 18th century, came out in the US in spring 2013.

Wendy Moore lives in south east London with her husband Peter, also a journalist, and two children, Sam and Susannah.



This bio was last updated on 06/01/2017. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Interview

Wendy Moore explains how she came to write Wedlock, the true story of the disastrous marriage and remarkable divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore, who at age 11 became the richest heiress in 18th Century England, only to stumble headlong into an abusive marriage and scandal following her first husband's early death.

How did you come to write Wedlock?

Wedlock is my second book and also my second relating the life of an eighteenth-century personality. After writing my first book, The Knife Man, about the eighteenth-century surgeon John Hunter, I was scouting around for another idea. I was still drawn to the colorful world of medical history and spent many weeks pottering around dusty medical archives when suddenly Mary Eleanor Bowes burst into my life.

I had had a brief encounter with Mary Eleanor Bowes, the Countess of Strathmore, in writing my first book. She was a friend of John Hunter and donated to him the skin of a giraffe that had been brought back from an expedition she had sponsored to southern Africa. I knew no more about her until the curator of the Hunterian Museum in London, where John Hunter's human and animal body parts are exhibited, mentioned that the countess had a fascinating story of her own. Not expecting much, I ordered a few books—accounts of the divorce case and the kidnapping trials published at the time—when I next visited the British Library. I could scarcely believe what I read. The shocking story of an accomplished heiress who was tricked into marrying an Irish scoundrel ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Books by this Author

Books by Wendy Moore at BookBrowse
How to Create the Perfect Wife jacket Wedlock jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Wendy Moore but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Ken Alder

    Ken Alder

    Ken Alder is an associate professor of history at Northwestern University and holds a Ph.D. from Harvard. His first book, Engineering the Revolution, won the 1998 Dexter Prize for the best book on the history of technology. ... (more)

  • Gaynor Arnold

    Gaynor Arnold

    Gaynor Arnold was born and brought up in Cardiff, Wales. An only child, she grew up in a rented house with her parents (both shop assistants), grandparents and aunt. When she was 10 she asked her parents for a typewriter and... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Wedlock

    Try:
    Girl in a Blue Dress
    by Gaynor Arnold

We recommend 13 similar authors


Non-members can see 2 results. Become a member
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Puzzle Box
    The Puzzle Box
    by Danielle Trussoni
    During the tumultuous last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, a 17-year-old emperor known as Meiji ...
  • Book Jacket
    Something, Not Nothing
    by Sarah Leavitt
    In 2020, after a lifetime of struggling with increasingly ill health, Sarah Leavitt's partner, ...
  • Book Jacket
    A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens
    by Raul Palma
    Raul Palma's debut novel A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens introduces Hugo Contreras, who came to the ...
  • Book Jacket
    The MANIAC
    by Benjamin Labatut
    The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut is an ambitious work that falls squarely into the category of fiction...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Libby Lost and Found
    by Stephanie Booth

    Libby Lost and Found is a book for people who don't know who they are without the books they love.

Who Said...

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

H I O the G

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.