Development depicting a scene from
Longus's
Daphnis and Chloe The genre of works of extended prose fiction dealing with romantic love existed in classical Greece. Richardson began writing
Pamela as a book of letter templates. Richardson accepted the request, but only if the letters had a moral purpose. As Richardson was writing the series of letters turned into a story. Writing in a new form, the novel, Richardson attempted to both instruct and entertain. Richardson wrote
Pamela as a
conduct book, a sort of manual which codified social and domestic behavior of men, women, and servants, as well as a narrative in order to provide a more morally concerned literature option for young audiences. The Romance novelist,
Maria Edgeworth, influenced Victorian era motifs and authors with many of her works including
Belinda (1801) and
Helen (1834). An admirer of Edgeworth, Jane Austen, further influenced the Romance genre and Victorian era with her novel
Pride and Prejudice (1813), which was called "the best romance novel ever written." In the early part of the
Victorian era, the
Brontë sisters, like Edgeworth and Austen, wrote literary fiction that influenced later popular fiction. While Maria Edgeworth introduced the orphaned heroine archetype in her Romantic works Belinda (1801) and Helen (1834),
Charlotte Brontë later adapted the archetype for the Victorian audience in
Jane Eyre (1847). Brontë's romance incorporates elements of both the gothic novel and
Elizabethan drama, and "demonstrate[s] the flexibility of the romance novel form." While the literary fiction romance continued to develop in the 20th century, the new subgenre of genre fiction started to become more popular after the
First World War. In 1919,
E. M. Hull's novel
The Sheik was published in the
United Kingdom. The protagonist of this book was termed an "
alpha male" who kidnapped the heroine and won her admiration through his forceful rape. The novel was one of the first modern works to introduce the bodice ripper concept that focused primarily on
rape fantasy, a theme explored in Samuel Richardson's
Pamela (1740). Although women were gaining more independence in life, publishers believed that readers would only accept premarital sex in the context of rape, as was customary practice up until challenged during the
women's rights movement. In this novel and those that followed, the rape was presented as societally acceptable by the author and depicted as more of a projected personal fantasy; the heroine is rarely if ever shown experiencing terror, stress, or trauma as a result because the author did not assume women had independent thought or rights to consider. The mass market version of the historical romance, which
Walter Scott developed in the early 19th century, is seen as beginning in 1921, when
Georgette Heyer published
The Black Moth. This is set in 1751, but many of Heyer's novels were inspired by Jane Austen's novels and are set around the time Austen lived, in the later
Regency period. Because Heyer's romances are set more than 100 years earlier, she includes carefully researched historical detail to help her readers understand the period. Unlike other popular love-romance novels of the time, Heyer's novels used the setting as a major plot device. Her characters often exhibit twentieth-century sensibilities, and more conventional characters in the novels point out the heroine's eccentricities, such as wanting to marry for love. Heyer was a prolific author, and wrote one to two historical romance novels per year until her death in 1974.
Chinese vernacular romance novels (translated into English as A Destiny in Two Paintings''), collection of the Harvard-Yenching Library During the
Ming and
Qing dynasties in China, there was a mass circulation and flourishment of a type of printed romantic novels called
caizi jiaren ("scholar and beauty"), which typically involves a love story between a beautiful and talented maiden and a handsome young scholar. Some examples of these novels include
Ping Shan Leng Yan,
Haoqiu zhuan,
Iu-Kiao-Li,
Huatu yuan,
Qiao Lian Zhu,
Wu Mei Yuan,
Bai Gui Zhi,
Jin Yun Qiao,
Ting Yue Lou,
Wu Jiang Xue,
Lin er bao,
Ying Yun meng,
Tiehua xianshi,
Shuishi yuan,
Jinxiang ting,
Erdu mei quanzhuan,
Dingqing ren,
Qingmeng tuo and
Zhuchun yuan. They feature themes influenced by the romantic
Tang dynasty chuanqi fictions such as ''
Yingying's Biography, The Tale of Li Wa and Huo Xiaoyu zhuan'', as well as the popular works of
Song and
Yuan playwrights such as
Bai Renfu,
Zheng Guangzu and
Wang Shifu.These novels reached their peak of popularity in the late Ming and early Qing periods, during the 17th century, when a myriad of novels of this type were sold and distributed. Moreover, these Chinese romance novels would also go on to have an enduring influence on both Eastern and Western literatures.
Rise of the category romance In the 1930s, the British publishers
Mills & Boon began releasing hardback romance novels. The books were sold through weekly two-penny libraries and were known as "the books in brown" for their brown binding. In the 1950s, the company began offering the books for sale through newsagents across the United Kingdom. A Canadian company,
Harlequin Enterprises, began distributing in North America in 1957 the category romances published by Mills & Boon. Mary Bonneycastle, wife of Harlequin founder Richard Bonneycastle, and her daughter, Judy Burgess, exercised editorial control over which Mills & Boon novels Harlequin reprinted. They had a "decency code", and rejected more sexually explicit material that Mills and Boon submitted for reprinting. Realizing that the genre was popular, Richard Bonneycastle finally decided to read a romance novel. He chose one of the more explicit novels and enjoyed it. On his orders, the company conducted a market test with the novel he had read and discovered that it outsold a similar, tamer novel. Overall, the novels were short and formulaic, featuring heroines who were sweet, compassionate, pure and innocent. The few heroines who worked did so in traditional female jobs, including as
nurses,
governesses and
secretaries. Intimacy in the novels never extended beyond a chaste kiss between the protagonists. By choosing to sell their books "where the women are," they allowed many mass-market merchandisers and even supermarkets to sell the books, all of which were exactly 192 pages. Harlequin then began a reader service, selling directly to readers who agreed to purchase a certain number of books each month.
Bodice Rippers in American romance fiction American literature adopted bodice rippers, rape fantasy, questionable consent, age-gap, underage women, lurid adultery, and force as a response to waning competition as a direct result of media censorship laws seen in similar industries including comic books considered lewd by the
Comics Code Authority Aside from its content bringing its primarily comic book audience to
paperback, rather than being first published in
hardcover like the category romances, were distributed in drug stores and other mass-market merchandising outlets. Avon followed its release with the 1974 publication of Woodiwiss' second novel,
The Wolf and the Dove and two more sexually graphic novels by newcomer
Rosemary Rogers,
Sweet Savage Love and
Dark Fires. The latter sold two million copies in its first three months of release. By 1975,
Publishers Weekly had reported that the "Avon originals" had sold a combined . The following year over 150 historical romance novels, many of them paperback originals, were published, selling over . The covers of these novels tended to feature scantily clad women being grabbed by the hero, and caused the novels to be referred to as "
bodice rippers". Cover arts of this style are referred to as
clinch covers. A
Wall Street Journal article in 1980 referred to these bodice rippers as "publishing's answer to the
Big Mac: They are juicy, cheap, predictable, and devoured in stupefying quantities by legions of loyal fans." The term
bodice ripper was considered divisive to some in the romance industry with more conservative morals., underage heroines were independent and strong-willed and were often paired with heroes who evolved into caring and compassionate men who truly admired the women they loved. This was in contrast to the contemporary romances published during this time, which were often characterized by weak females who fell in love with overbearing
alpha males.
Category romance adapts Category romance lines were slower to react to some of the changes that had swept the historical romance subgenre. Despite the fact that the former Mills & Boon lines were now owned by a
North American company, the lines did not have any American writers until 1975, when Harlequin purchased a novel by
Janet Dailey. Dailey's novels provided the romance genre's "first look at heroines, heroes and courtships that take place in America, with American sensibilities, assumptions, history, and most of all, settings." Harlequin was unsure how the market would react to this new type of romance, and was unwilling to fully embrace it. In the late 1970s, a Harlequin editor rejected a manuscript by
Nora Roberts, who has since become the top-selling romance author, because "they already had their American writer." Harlequin sold almost $70 million of its paperback romances in 1979 through 100,000 supermarkets and other stores, giving the company almost 10% of the market for paperback books. That year the company began distributing its own books in the United States instead of through
Simon & Schuster's
Pocket Books. In 1980 Simon & Schuster formed Silhouette Books to publish its own romance novels, beginning what
The New York Times called "perhaps the most bitter war in American book publishing history." The company sought to take advantage of the untapped talent of the American writers. They published several lines of category romance, and encouraged their writers to create stronger heroines and less dominant heroes. Silhouette soon saw their market share expand, and in 1984, Harlequin acquired them. Despite the acquisition, Silhouette continued to retain editorial control and to publish various lines under their own imprint. A 1982 survey of romance readers confirmed that the new styles of writing were attracting new readers to the genre. 35% of the readers surveyed had begun reading romances after 1977. An additional 31% of those surveyed had been readers for between 6 and 10 years, meaning they had become interested in the genre after 1972, when Woodiwiss' novel ,
The Flame and the Flower, was published. This means that two-thirds of those surveyed joined the genre after it had begun to change. The number of category romance lines increased at a rapid pace, and by 1985 there were 16 separate lines producing a total of 80 novels per month. The sudden increase in category romance lines meant an equally sudden increase in demand for writers of the new style of romance novel. This tight market caused a proportionate decrease in the quality of the novels that were being released. By 1984, the market was saturated with category lines and readers had begun to complain of redundancy in plots. The following year, the "dampening effect of the high level of redundancy associated with series romances was evident in the decreased number of titles being read per month." Harlequin's return rate, which had been less than 25% in 1978, when it was the primary provider of category romance, swelled to 60%.
Further change The genre continued to expand in the mid-to-late 1980s, as publishers realized that the more popular authors were often those who stretched the boundaries of the genre. A 1984 novel by
LaVyrle Spencer featured an overweight, middle-aged hero who had to make drastic changes to his lifestyle to win the heroine, while a 1987 Dailey novel involved an ugly hero and a heroine who was searching for her birth mother.
Jayne Ann Krentz's 1986 novel
Sweet Starfire became the first futuristic romance, combining elements of traditional romance novels and science fiction. The relationships had also modernized: by the 1990s, it was rare to see a book that featured a man raping his future wife. In the mid-to-late 1980s, contemporary romances began to feature women in more male-dominated jobs, such as offshore oil rigs and the space program. The age range of heroines also began to expand, so that books began to feature women who had already reached 30 and even 40. Heroes also changed, with some authors veering towards a more sensitive man. Despite the broadening of some aspects of the plot, other taboos remained, and publishers discouraged authors from writing about controversial subjects such as terrorism, warfare, and masculine sports. Romance novels began to contain more humor beginning in the 1990s, as
Julie Garwood began introducing a great deal of humor into her historical romances. The romance novel began to expand in other ways as well. The 21st century brought additional changes to the genre that included diversifying main characters and plots to incorporate identities that had not previously been represented. Scholars of romance novel history have observed that characters with disabilities have been largely underrepresented in mainstream media, including romance novels. By the early 2000s, though, more books in the romance genre featured heroes and heroines with physical and mental impairments.
Mary Balogh's
Simply Love, published in 2006, features a hero with facial scarring and nerve damage who overcomes fears of rejection due to his physical appearance to enter a romantic relationship and family unit by the end of the novel. This was a substantial shift from past narratives where disabled characters were "de-eroticized" and not given storylines that included sex or romantic love. However, it is still rare to find romance novels in which there are characters with cognitive disabilities, and they are most likely to be included as secondary characters. In the 21st century, however, such characters are relatively common and even have their own sub-genres within the romance category. In the earliest Harlequin romance novels, heroines were typically nurses and secretaries, but as time has passed and women have entered the workforce in larger numbers, romance heroines have spanned the career spectrum. Modern romance novels now feature more balanced relationships between men and women. By 2000, the covers had begun to evolve from featuring a scantily clad couple to showing a view of the landscape featured in the novel.
Mentioned Writers •
Maria Edgeworth •
Samuel Richardson •
Jane Austen •
Charlotte Brontë •
Catherine Cookson •
Melissa Pritchard • Arabesque •
LaVyrle Spencer •
Jayne Ann Krentz' •
Julie Garwood •
Jude Deveraux •
Mary Balogh •
Christine Feehan •
Helen Hoang •
Jilly Cooper ==Critical reception==