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Romance novel

This article is about the type of genre fiction. For the novel titled Romance, see Romance (novel).
Not to be confused with Romance (prose fiction).

"Oh Edward! How can you?", a late-19th-century illustration from Sense and Sensibility (1811) by Jane Austen, a pioneer of the genre

A romance novel or romantic novel is a genre fiction novel that primary focuses on the relationship and romantic love between two people, typically with an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending. Authors who have contributed to the development of this genre include Maria Edgeworth, Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Brontë.

Romance novels encompass various subgenres, such as fantasy, contemporary, historical romance, paranormal fiction, and science fiction. Women have traditionally been the primary readers of romance novels, but according to the Romance Writers of America, 16% of men read romance novels.[1]

A thriving genre of works conventionally referred to as "romance novels" existed in ancient Greece.[2] Other precursors can be found in the literary fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries, including Samuel Richardson's sentimental novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) and the novels of Jane Austen. Austen inspired Georgette Heyer, the British author of historical romance set around the time Austen lived,[3] as well as detective fiction. Heyer's first romance novel, The Black Moth (1921), was set in 1751.

The British company Mills & Boon began releasing romance novels for women in the 1930s. Their books were sold in North America by Harlequin Enterprises Ltd,[4] which began direct marketing to readers and allowing mass-market merchandisers to carry the books.

An early American example of a mass-market romance was Kathleen E. Woodiwiss' The Flame and the Flower (1972), published by Avon Books.[5] This was the first single-title romance novel to be published as an original paperback in the US.[5] Nancy Coffey was the senior editor who negotiated a multi-book deal with Woodiwiss.[5] In the UK, the romance genre was long established through the works of prolific author, Georgette Heyer,[6][7] which contain many tropes and stereotypes, some of which, have recently been edited out of some of her novels.[8] In the 1950s emerging bestselling British romance writers included Catherine Cookson,[9] followed in the 1980s, by Marion Chesney (pen name M.C. Beaton), who was known more widely for her detective series featuring Hamish MacBeth and Agatha Raisin.[10]

Strong sales of popular romance novels[11] make this the largest segment of the global book market.[12] The genre boomed in the 1980s, with the addition of many different categories of romance and an increased number of single-title romances, but popular authors started pushing the boundaries of both the genre and plot, as well as creating more contemporary characters.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference rwadefn was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Reardon, Bryan P. (1989). Collected Ancient Greek Novels. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 1–16. ISBN 0-520-04306-5. Retrieved May 28, 2017.
  3. ^ Regis, Pamela (2007). A Natural History of the Romance Novel. University of Pennsylvania Press.
  4. ^ "Home - Corporate Harlequin". Retrieved January 22, 2019.
  5. ^ a b c Lutz, Deborah (2006). The dangerous lover: Gothic villains, Byronism, and the nineteenth-century seduction narrative. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8142-1034-5. OCLC 63187398.
  6. ^ "Before Bridgerton: how Georgette Heyer re-invented Regency". www.penguin.co.uk. March 29, 2022. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
  7. ^ Fry, Stephen (October 1, 2021). "Stephen Fry on the enduring appeal of Georgette Heyer". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
  8. ^ Alter, Alexandra (October 30, 2023). "'You Can't Hide It': Georgette Heyer and the Perils of Posthumous Revision". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
  9. ^ "Show remembers Catherine Cookson two decades after death". June 22, 2018. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
  10. ^ McDonald, Sally (October 19, 2020). "Hamish, Agatha and me: Writer on taking up the best-selling pen of MC Beaton, the undisputed queen of cosy crime". The Sunday Post. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
  11. ^ King, Rachel (August 21, 2021). "The romance novel sales boom continues". Fortune. Retrieved May 27, 2023.
  12. ^ Kamblé, Jayashree; Murphy Selinger, Eric; Teo, Hsu-Ming, eds. (2020). The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781315613468.

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