Romance novel
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A romance or romantic novel is a genre fiction novel that primarily focuses on the relationship and romantic love between two people, typically with an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending. Authors who have significantly contributed to the development of this genre include Samuel Richardson, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, and Anne Brontë.
Romance novels encompass various subgenres, such as fantasy, contemporary, historical romance, paranormal fiction, sapphic, and science fiction. They also contain tropes like enemies to lovers, second chance, and forced proximity. While women have traditionally been the primary readers of romance novels, a 2017 study commissioned by the Romance Writers of America found that men accounted for 18% of romance book buyers.[1]
The 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] 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]
Strong sales of popular romance novels[9] make this the largest segment of the global book market.[10] 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.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
rwadefnwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ 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.
- ^ Regis, Pamela (2007). A Natural History of the Romance Novel. University of Pennsylvania Press.
- ^ "Home - Corporate Harlequin". Retrieved January 22, 2019.
- ^ a b 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.
- ^ "Before Bridgerton: how Georgette Heyer re-invented Regency". www.penguin.co.uk. March 29, 2022. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
- ^ Fry, Stephen (October 1, 2021). "Stephen Fry on the enduring appeal of Georgette Heyer". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
- ^ 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.
- ^ King, Rachel (August 21, 2021). "The romance novel sales boom continues". Fortune. Retrieved May 27, 2023.
- ^ Kamblé, Jayashree; Murphy Selinger, Eric; Teo, Hsu-Ming, eds. (2020). The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781315613468.