The category romances of Harlequin Mills and Boon are an international phenomenon—sold everywhere from cell phones in Japan to railway stations in Europe and written by authors from around the world. The most popular of these categories is Harlequin Presents, which was originally started with only authors from England, but is now dominated by writers from the United Kingdom, Australia, [...]
Filed under Talking About Romance · Tagged with Antipodes, Australia, Breiman and Cutler, Canada, Deborah Philips, Europe, exotic setting, glamour, Harlequin, Harlequin Presents, Holland, Jack Elliott, Japan, Karen van der Zee, language, Leslie Rabine, linguistics, Marketing Moonshine, Mills and Boon, mobile devices, New Zealand, Random Forest, Reading the Romantic Heroine, regionalism, sales locations, South Africa, statistics, text mining, time, transporation, U.K., U.S.A.
Can a romance novel be a work of art? Baldly put, the question seems a little out of date. After all, it’s been almost a hundred years since Marcel Duchamp bought a snow shovel and inscribed it In Advance of the Broken Arm (1915), the first of his famous “Readymades.” (His next big number is even more famous: in 1917, [...]
Filed under Talking About Romance · Tagged with Ann Barr Snitow, art, Eric Selinger, Flarf, For Love or Money: The Literary Art of the Harlequin Mills & Boon Romance, Fountain, Guy Davenport, Harlequin, Helen Vendler, highbrow, Hugh Kenner, In Advance of the Broken Arm, irony, Kathleen Woodiwiss, Laura Vivanco, literary criticism, lowbrow, Marcel Duchamp, Marjorie Perloff, Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different, metaphors, Mills and Boon, modal counterpoint, myths, poetry, Poets & Writers, Readymades, realism, Teach Me Tonight, The Flame and the Flower
Everyone knows the story: a young, Western heroine meets a swarthy sheikh, is abducted to his desert kingdom where they (eventually) fall in love and live happily ever after. This is the quintessential “sheikh romance,” a distinctive sub-genre of contemporary Harlequin Mills & Boon romance. The number of sheikh titles published has increased exponentially, with more original titles published in [...]
Filed under Talking About Romance · Tagged with 1300s, 9/11, Afghanistan, Amy Burge, baptism, christening, Christianity, color symbolism, conflict, conversion, culture shock, Damascus, democracy, desert romance, E.M. Hull, England, forced marriage, harem, Harlequin, infrastructure, Iraq, Islam, Jane Porter, kidnapping, marriage, Middle Ages, Middle East, Middle English romance, Mills and Boon, modernity, polygamy, princesses, religion, Saracen, sheik, skin color, sultan, Tally, the East, The King of Tars, The Sheik, The Sheik's Disobedient Bride, the West, UK, urban planning, war, westernization
Every Sunday morning when I turn to the New York Times Book Review, I read the bestseller lists looking for familiar names from the early 1980s, when burgeoning new series of American category romances redefined the genre. I almost always find one or more: Nora Roberts (or J.D. Robb), Iris Johansen, Fern Michaels, Jayne Ann Krentz (or one of her [...]
Filed under Talking About Romance · Tagged with A Turn in the Road, Bantam Loveswept, Bonnie, category romance, Chasing Fire, Copper Beach, Debbie Macomber, Dell Candlelight Ecstasy, Fern Michaels, Gentle Pirate, Harlequin, Iris Johansen, Irish Thoroughbred, J.D. Robb, Jayne Ann Krentz, Kay Mussell, Mills and Boon, Mr. and Miss Anonymous, New York Times bestsellers, Nora Roberts, Romance Writers of America, Sandra Brown, Silhouette, Simon and Schuster, Stormy Vows, That Wintry Feeling, Whisper My Name, You. . . Again
The sheik or desert romance category is dominated by American authors these days but this was not always the case. The British invented the desert romance subgenre in the early 1900s with novels such as Robert Hichens’ The Garden of Allah (1904). E.M. Hull famously transformed both the subgenre as well as (arguably) the romance genre when The Sheik was [...]
Filed under Talking About Romance · Tagged with ABC News, Amy Burge, Arabs, Aristophane, Barbara Faith, Bedouin, Bedouin Bride, Blue Jasmine, culture clash, Desert Man, desert romance, Desert Song, E.M. Hull, East, Edward Said, Emily Haddad, England, Evelyn Back, Flower of the Desert, Hsu-Ming Teo, imprisonment, Islam, Jasmine Hasir, Jessica Taylor, John Cooley, Katherine Bishop, kidnapping, Lion of the Desert, Lysistrata, Middle East, Mills and Boon, Morocco, Muslims, Orientalism, Other, rape, Rashid Ben Hasir, Robert Hichen, Rudolph Valentino, sheik, stereotypes, The Garden of Allah, The Sheik, U.S.A., Violet Winspear, West, women's rights
While growing up in India in the eighties and nineties, I read hundreds of romance novels published by the British firm of Mills and Boon, many featuring “sardonic” heroes and young British heroines. It was not until graduate school that I realized that these novels, with titles like Lucifer’s Brand and Falcon’s Prey, resembled the myth of Hades and Persephone. [...]
Filed under Talking About Romance · Tagged with actor, allusions, Byron, chef, Come Down O Maid, courtship narrative, domestic violence, Falcon's Prey, G.B.H. Walton, Gothic, Greek myths, Hades, Harlequin, Hugh Walton, Jayashree Kamble, Julia Fry, Lord Alfred Tennyson, Love in the Valley, Lucifer's Brand, Mills and Boon, myths, New Zealand, Nicola West, odd couple, Penny Jordan, Perspehone, poetry, retelling, Richard Walton, Robert Herrick, Romanticism, screwball comedy, Shakespeare, Susan Napier, The Night-Piece to Julia, Upon Julia's Clothes
As of today, the Popular Romance Project has attracted visitors from at least 66 different countries and territories, suggesting that romantic novels are of near global interest. Our stats raise countless questions. For example, given that the HEA (or HFN) is crucial to the definition of romance genre fiction, have our top countries (the U.S.A., Canada, the U.K., Australia, and [...]
Filed under Behind the Scenes · Tagged with Adoras collection, Africa, Austrailia, Belgium, Brian Larkin, Canada, comics, community, film, French, HEA, HFN, India, Japan, Lydia Moudileno, manga, men, Middle East, Mills and Boon, Nigeria, Reuters, soap operas, soyayya, Turkey, U.K., U.S.A.
