Jacky Colliss Harvey read English at Cambridge, and History of Art at the Courtauld Institute, and had a twenty-year career in museum publishing, as well as working as a life-model and film extra. She is well known as a commentator and reviewer, speaking in both the UK and abroad on the arts and their relation to popular culture.
Her first book, Red: A Natural History of the Redhead (Black Dog and Leventhal in the US and Allen & Unwin in the UK), was published in 2015 to critical acclaim, and became a New York Times bestseller. This was followed by The Animal's Companion, a cultural history of the pet-owner, published in 2018 by Hachette and Allen & Unwin in the US and UK, and by Knesebeck in Germany and Eulyoo in Korea. Her latest non-fiction book is Walking Pepys London (Haus Armchair Traveller, 2021), which was described by the TLS as 'as good a book of its kind as one could hope for'. Her next non-fiction title, Noble Domes, is a cultural history of baldness, and will be published by the University of Chicago Press.
As J C Harvey she also writes historical fiction, creating a trilogy of novels set against the Thirty Years War (1618-48). The first of these, The Silver Wolf, published by Allen & Unwin in 2022, was longlisted for the HWA Debut Crown and was praised by Tracy Chevalier as 'superb storytelling' and by S.W Perry as 'outstanding'. Book II, The Dead Men, published in February 2023, was hailed by Minette Walters as 'vibrant, twisting and compelling'. Book III, The Wanton Road, will publish in July 2024, and brings the action of the trilogy back to the London underworld of the English Civil War.
Christmas reading 2023 - historical books to give or ask for (Historia Magazine)
