The nature of slavery broke families apart, and instilled great emotional yearnings. Darlene Clark Hine connects the importance of today’s African American romances to the cultural legacy of slavery and Reconstruction. Do the romances you read connect to your genealogy in any way? Do you prefer ancestral settings? Do you feel that romances have the ability to heal or to [...]
Filed under Talking About Romance · Tagged with 1700s, 1800s, 1900s, 1990s, 2000s, abuse, acceptance, accomplishment, African American romance, Beverly Jenkins, Brenda Jackson, class, Darlene Clark Hine, dignity, family, heroines, idealism, legal history, love, marriage, opportunity, profession, Reconstruction, slave narratives, slavery, Their Eyes Were Watching God, violence, vulnerability, women, Zora Neale Hurston
The Library of Congress invited Eloisa James to talk at the 2012 National Book Festival, making her the first romance author to speak at the festival. She claims that genre fiction transforms individual lives by resonating with reader emotions. We hope you enjoy the following selections! What lessons have you learned from reading romances or other genre novels? If you [...]
Filed under Behind the Scenes · Tagged with 2010s, architecture, Barbara Cartland, beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Carol Bly, childhood, duchesses, Eloisa James, expectations, fairy tales, genre fiction, Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Library of Congress, literature, love, Mary Bly, meritocracy, mystery, National Book Festival, parents, pirates, poetry, Pride and Prejudice, relativity, Robert Bly, social history, teaching, The Ugly Duchess, William Butler Yeats
Could you recognize love in another time or part of the world or even another subculture? DePaul University professor of English Eric Selinger ponders the wide variety of actions and thoughts encompassed within one word. How do you define love? What’s required for you to read or view or feel something and accept it as love? Do you have family [...]
Filed under Talking About Romance · Tagged with anthropology, Beatrice, cultures, Dante Alighieri, definition of love, Eric Selinger, history, love, social history, sociology, subcultures, variety, Vita Nuova
The theme of my two Regency novels, Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander and Pride/Prejudice, is the m/m/f ménage told as a romance, a love story with two happy endings. At the end of the novels, the hero—a conventionally masculine man—is in loving relationships with his wife and a male partner, and each partner is aware of and accepts the [...]
Filed under Talking About Romance · Tagged with 1600s, age, Ann Herendeen, arranged marriages, economic marriages, egalitarian, England, fashion, Ganymede, gender, GLBT, homophobia, identity, Kit, law, love, marriage, ménage, Mother Clap's Molly House: The Gay Subculture in England 1700-1830, Pakistan, Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander, Pride/Prejudice, prostitution, Regency, research, Rictor Norton, sexuality, social heirarchy, Stephanie Coontz
One of the topics that comes up a lot among historical writers is what research books are essential. If you ask your top 10 favorite authors, you’d probably end up with a pretty impressive research library (and I’d love to see other authors tell us about their Must Have Books in the comments). Here are mine. I think these books [...]
Filed under Behind the Scenes · Tagged with 1700s, 20000 Years of Fashion, and Marriage in England 1500-1800, archetypes, aristocracy, arranged marriage, children, clubs, courtship, divorce, domestic life, economic marriages, England, Enlightenment, family, fashion, food, François Boucher, gentlemen, Georgian, Hannah Glasse, Hardwicke Marriage Act, illegitimacy, inheritance, Isobel Carr, law, Lawrence Stone, love, Mark Bence-Jones, marriage, Middle Ages, mourning, Peerage Law in England, peerages, Randolph Trumbach, Regency, remarriage, research, Road to Divorce, Season, servants, sex, Sharon Laudermilk, Sir Francis Beaufort Palmer, social history, social mobility, statistics, Teresa Hamlin, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, The British Aristocracy, The Family, The Family Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800, The Regency Companion, The Rise of the Egalitarian Family: Aristocratic Kinship and Domestic Relations in Eighteenth-Century England, the ton, theatres, titles, upper class, values, Victorian, wives, worldbuilding
At an international conference on popular romance fiction, a member of the logistical team that was hosting us took me aside to ask about the topic of the gathering. “Love?” he smiled, a little bemused. “You know, I came here from Iran—and no one knows more about love than the Persians.” As we chatted, he told me more, breaking periodically [...]
Filed under Talking About Romance · Tagged with 1600s, Arbella, band members, baristas, business women, Cavafy, City Hall, class, Coffee Prince, cross-dressing, Elif Shafek, Ella Rubenstein, Eric Selinger, Farsi, Flower Boy Band, France, Greece, gumiho, Hafez, housewives, I Do I Do, Ibn 'Arabi, Iran, Islam, Italy, John Wintrhop, Kurds, love, Martin Stokes, mayors, Middle East, multicultural, My Girlfriend is a Gumiho, My Lovely Sam-Soon, paranormal romance, poetry, privacy, Puritans, religion, romantic dramas, Ronald Reagan, Rumi, Sappho, Shams of Tabriz, Shiraz, soap operas, Song of the Open Road, South Korea, television, The Republic of Love, Turkey, Turks, Walt Whitman
Bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz writes under three names, one for each of the three worlds she’s created: she’s Amanda Quick for historical romantic suspense, Jayne Ann Krentz (her married name) for contemporary romantic suspense, and Jayne Castle (her birth name) for futuristic/paranormal romantic suspense. She believes that romance novels celebrate women’s heroic virtues and values, and that all genre [...]
Filed under Interviews · Tagged with Amanda Quick, courage, determination, genre, genre reception, heroes, heroic archetypes, heroines, honor, integrity, Jayne Ann Krentz, Jayne Castle, love, respect, society defined
Beverly Jenkins has written 30 novels and she is much beloved by her readers. Most of her romantic fiction is set in the 19th century, and some of her contemporary romances (she writes romantic suspense and faith-based romances) are about characters who are the descendants of her 19th-century characters. Her historical books all have bibliographies in the back—and it’s clear [...]
Filed under Interviews · Tagged with 19th century, African American romance, bankers, Beverly Jenkins, community, doctors, Dorothy Sterling, heroes, heroines, Jim Crow, journalists, love
