A History of Mills & Boon

Show Notes

When we look at the history of romance novels, often people pin the start of modern romance history to the 1972 publication of The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen Woodiwiss. By doing this, people erase a key evolution and influence in romance, which is the category romance. If you’re from the UK then you already know that the category publisher there is Mills & Boon, and they’ve been a publisher for a little over a century. First starting out as a general publisher in 1908, over the decades Mills & Boon gradually specialized in romance novels. Harlequin, first seeking to re-print their medical romances, eventually bought Mills & Boon in 1971. While we look at the history of the company, we also focus on publishing gatekeepers and how they’ve influenced the romance genre.

Bibliography

1921 - The Craft of Fiction by Percy Lubbock

1965 - Stranger Than Fiction by Denise Robins

1981 - “The Ever-Changing Faces of Romance” by Marlouise Oates. Los Angeles Times https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1981/07/05/the-ever-changing-faces-of-romance/ad2cc935-80ae-438a-b664-68188e3f096d/

1983 - Love Lines by Rosemary Guiley

1984 - Love’s $weet Return by Margaret Ann Jensen

1984 - “The Romance Wars: the Harlequin-Silhouete Deal Ended Years of Increasingly Costly Struggle as Expenses Rose and Tastes Changed.” Publishers Weekly. 

1987 - The Romance Revolution by Carol Thurston

1990 - ““No More Virgins”: Writing Romance - an Interview with Emma Darcy” by Albert Moran. The Media of Publishing. https://freotopia.org/readingroom/4.1/Darcy.html

1992 - “Romance Slaves of Harlequin” by Richard Pollak. The Nation

1992 - “Love makes the world go round (?): The romantic novel as a publishing phenomenon” by Frances Whitehead. Logos

1994 - “Media : New Owners Rescue Mills & Boon From Strong Heroes, Pliant Heroines : Venerable British publisher updates its romance novels with materialism, more sex and a bold seductress or two” by William Tuohy. LA Times. https://web.archive.org/web/20210730022717/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-03-22-wr-37238-story.html

1994 - “A little of the romance goes out of Mills & Boon” by Sally Weale. The Guardian

1996 - The Merchants of Venus by Paul Grescoe

1996 - “Obituary: John Boon” by Jack Adrian, David Waddington. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-john-boon-5607633.html

1998 - “Category Romances” by George Paizis. The Translator, 4:1, 1-24, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13556509.1998.10799004

1999 - The Romantic Fiction of Mills & Boon 1909 — 1990s by jay Dixon

1999 - Passion’s Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon by Joseph McAleer

2000 - “Romancing the World: Harlequin Romances, the Capitalist Dream, and the Conquest of Europe and Asia” by Peter Derbyshire - https://www.jstor.org/stable/23414563

2004 - “'Sorry, Harlequin,' She Sighed Tenderly, 'I'm Reading Something Else.’” By Edward Hyatt. The New York Times. https://web.archive.org/web/20210126000409/https://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/17/books/sorry-harlequin-she-sighed-tenderly-i-m-reading-something-else.html

2004 - “Harlequin Reorganizes Editorial Team” by Jim Milliot. Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20040816/25866-harlequin-reorganizes-editorial-team.html

2007 - “The Black Romance” by Belinda Edmondson. Women’s Studies Quarterly. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27649661

2007 - On Writing Romance: How to Craft a Novel That Sells by Leigh Michaels

2008 - “And I deliver’: An interview with Emma Darcy by Glen Thomas. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies

2008 - The Art of Romance Mills & Boon and Harlequin Cover Designs by Joanna Bowring

2009 - “Digital Romance: When it comes to format, romance readers are promiscuous” by Rose Fox. Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20091116/26153-digital-romance.html

2010 - “An insider's guide to writing for Mills & Boon” by Alison Flood. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/15/insider-guide-writing-mills-boon

2010 - Fabulous at Fifty Recollections of the Romantic Novelists’ Association 1960–2010 edited by Jenny Haddon & Diane Pearson

2011 - “At Harlequin, Toye Retires, Moggy Rises.” Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/people/article/45894-at-harlequin-toye-retires-moggy-rises.html

2011 - “Harlequin Announces Stoeker’s Retirement, Personnel Changes.” Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/people/article/46271-harlequin-announces-stoecker-s-retirement-personnel-changes.html

2014 - “Torstar Sells Harlequin to News Corp.” CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/torstar-sells-harlequin-to-news-corp-for-455m-1.2629450

2014 - “Harlequin Mills & Boon's First Black Romance?” by Laura Vivanco. https://vivanco.me.uk/blog/post/harlequin-mills-boons-first-black-romance

2014 - “Patterns and Trends in Harlequin Category Romances” by Jack Elliot. Advancing Digital Humanities

2014 - “Love Affair With Digital Over For Romance Publisher Harlequin?” by Jeremy Greenfield. Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremygreenfield/2014/03/06/love-affair-with-digital-over-for-romance-publisher-harlequin/

2014 - “Three Reasons News Corp Bought Harlequin, World’s Biggest Romance Book Publisher” by Jeremy Greenfield. Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremygreenfield/2014/05/02/news-corp-buys-harlequin-worlds-biggest-romance-book-publisher-three-reasons/

2014 - “Romance and Innovation in Twenty-First Century Publishing” by Olivia Tapper. Publishing Research Quarterly

2017 - “jay Dixon: Write the best novel you can!” https://romanticnovelistsassociationblog.blogspot.com/2017/07/jay-dixon-write-best-novel-you-can.html

2017 - “Romance Was His Metier” by Steven Heller. PRINT. https://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/harlequin/

2019 - “How Capitalism Changed American Literature” by Dan Sinykin. Public Books https://www.publicbooks.org/how-capitalism-changed-american-literature/

2021 - “Marketing Love: Romance Publishers Mills & Boon and Harlequin Enterprises, 1930–1990” by Denise Hardesty Sutton

2022 - “‘Dance between Raindrops’: A Conversation with Vivian Stephens” with Julie E. Moody-Freeman. Journal of Popular Romance Studies - chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.jprstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/DBRACWVS.05.22.pdf

2022 - “Harlequin and LGBTQ+ Romance: A Chat with Dianne Moggy.” https://www.writeforharlequin.com/23048-2/

2024 - “Passion, Profit and Prejudice: The Women Behind the Rise of Mills & Boon 1936-1976” by Vic Pickup. Women’s History Today

2024 - “Words of Wisdom from Harlequin’s Vice President of Editorial” by Marcia King-Gamble. https://romancingthegenres.blogspot.com/2024/11/words-of-wisdom-from-harelquins-vice.html

2025 - “Readerlink Will Stop Distributing Mass Market Paperbacks at the End of 2025” by Jim Milliot. Publishers Weeklyhttps://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/industry-deals/article/97161-readerlink-will-stop-distributing-mass-market-paperbacks-at-the-end-of-2025.html

2025 - “Publishers Plan for a New Mass Market Paperback Winnowing” by Jim Milliot. Publishers Weekly https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/97179-book-publishers-plan-for-a-reduced-mass-market-paperback-footprint.html

Transcript

Beth

Welcome to Reformed Rakes, a historical romance podcast that still misses Jacqui Bianchi. My name is Beth, and I write at the Substack Ministrations.

Emma

I'm Emma, a law library in writing about justice and romance at the Substack Restorative Romance.

Chels

My name is Chels, and I'm a writer at the romance newsletter The Loose Cravat.

Beth

When we look at the history of romance novels, often people pin the start of modern romance history to the 1972 publication of The Flame and the Flower. By doing this, people erase a key evolution and influence in romance, which is the category romance. If you’re American, and honestly if you’re not, then you probably know the name Harlequin, a romance publishing firm whose branding surpasses that of its authors. Harlequin publishes their books in lines or categories, so all the books in that line follow a certain theme. For example, Harlequin Intrigue fits conventions of thrillers and crime stories. Category romance is formula fiction that follows guidelines and conventions often put out by the publisher of that line. 

When I started researching this, I wanted to do a history of Harlequin; however, you can’t do a history of Harlequin without doing a history of Mills & Boon. If you’re from the UK then you already know that the category publisher there is Mills & Boon, and they’ve been a publisher for a little over a century. First starting out as a general publisher in 1908, over the decades Mills & Boon gradually specialized in romance novels. Harlequin, first seeking to re-print their medical romances, eventually bought Mills & Boon in 1971.

My approach to this episode will be to focus on the publishing gatekeepers, Mills & Boon and Harlequin, specifically, to see how they've influenced the romance genre. I don't want the takeaway I don't say from this to be thing bad or thing good, but thing exists. Since this thing exists, how does it show up in our stories today? How did it shape stories in the past? How does it shape it now? How do you define romance? When I consider the modern definition of romance, much of it is influenced by category romances and by romance publishing at large.

Do we want to do a little interlude? If you've read any Mills & Boon books or Harlequin or just categories in general.

Chels

Yeah. I read a lot of Janet Daileys. She did both Mills & Boon and Harlequin. She started Mills & Boon. I've read a handful of '80s categories. I've read some Silhouettes. I've read Dell. But yeah, no, I've definitely read. So I am familiar, and I am familiar with... Well, I guess I would say more like 80s, 70s. I haven't really read far back into the old... I haven't gone so far as 50s or 60s or anything, because I know that both of these companies have a really long history.

Beth

Yeah. Sometimes, I would read from one book that I'll talk about—jay Dixon is the author, and she would talk about certain books from early 1910s, and I would try and find the title. And it's in a library somewhere, but it's not possible to read.

Emma

I do collect romance levels, but not nearly at the level Chels says. I think a lot of the categories that I've read, I didn't realize were categories, because if you're checking out an e-book, it's harder to tell, I think, because you're not holding the slim volume. And a lot of books have been republished. A lot of Mary Balogh books. When she wrote categories, because she was successful as a main title author, they get republished as two books in one book, and that's how you check them out in e-books now. And so I think it took me a while to realize that those were categories, and that's why they felt different than later Mary Balogh books. I actually read a Mills & Boon Contemporary this morning, and it was a hoot. I was like, this may be my new thing. I loved it. It was really fun. It was called Ruthlessly Seduced by an Italian Billionaire. And I was like, this is the right time. I see why people read why a certain type of reader would read all of these? Because it was just like... I think a lot of people characterize romance as brain candy.

And I'm like, Romance is so much more than this. This book was brain candy. And it was fun. The whole thing was designed to be fun. And it was like 170 pages. I finished it in an hour and a half. I was like, yeah, I could see why someone would read these perpetually. And they would get a very loyal reader base.

Chels

They have a whole line that's billionaire. I was at a conference recently. They have a whole line that's just billionaire, I think, Mills & Boon does.

Beth

Yeah, those books, I feel like... I was talking to Emma before we started recording. I feel like I can see some influence in a Lisa Kleypas or Beverly Jenkins with just how much is happening in your book? Because that's what is happening in categories. Just a thing that you will think would be the whole book, that's 10 pages. Or we're on the next thing already. So much is happening.

Chels

Yeah.

Beth

Which I really appreciate.

Emma

So the one I read this morning actually was a Harlequin. It was a Harlequin Presents, which is all about people who are very wealthy, royals and billionaires. So it's like exotic locations.

Beth

I'm going to frame the script a bit. So to start off, imagine this episode is a painting, and I'm pointing up the usage of the color red. There's a lot to talk about when considering who and what influences genre. Authors, themes, history, publishers. I narrowed the focus to these publishers because I find it difficult to measure influence, and that's what we're trying to do in this episode.

So while researching, I was influenced by how John Markert talks about gatekeepers in publishing in his 2016 book Publishing Romance. He suggests that two things drive gatekeepers in stable markets, their own personal taste and what they perceive the market conditions to be. Markert adds, “gatekeepers seek to find a niche for their product by surveying the competition; they attempt to find something similar to, but slightly different from, the competition to offer the public.” A lot of publishing tends to be conservative in nature, as gatekeepers fear something too new might be rejected by consumers. I feel like the motto of publishing is selling books with a familiar, unique value proposition. Like, look at this thing you've liked in the past, and our new book is this thing you liked, moved to the left a little.

Mills & Boon books often fall in in line with this conservatism based on Markert's definition. But I find this is true across publishing. If we look at one of the namesakes of Mills & Boon, Charles Boon, we find a man bent on keeping his story's uniform in the hopes they would be reliably profitable. The term formula fiction has a negative connotation, yet I think people underestimate the difficulty in writing to a formula. Even in this push for a uniform line, as jay Dixon argues in her book, Romantic Fiction from 1909 to 1990s. Authors writing within a line still cover a wide range of conflicts and story lines. She shows how these themes of story lines have evolved over the past century. So I won't discuss authors as much since I haven't read many Mills & Boon novels. And by many, I mean, I feel like to do a proper job, you'd have to read 100 across decades to really be like, yes, I've got a good grasp on how things have changed over time. And tracking the themes and genre changes across the decades in Mills & Boon novels is beyond the scope of this podcast episode.

Rather, I will recommend Joseph McAleer's, Passion's Fortune, and again, jay Dixon's, The Romance Fiction of Mills & Boon. Dixon comes as a former editor and dedicated reader of Mills & Boon novels, and Joseph McAleer has a doctorate in Modern History, and he had a number of different jobs, so I'm very curious how he ended up writing this book. So let's get into the history of the company. Emma and Gels will react throughout. My script is pulled from the books we have on Mills & Boon. So jay Dixon and Joseph McAleer, as I said. Paul Gresco, a Canadian business journalist. He wrote The Merchants of Venus in 1996, which is primarily a history of Harlequin, although he has a chapter on Mills & Boon and talks about the company. Dixon and McAleer take a more academic approach in their citations and formatting, while Cresco wrote to a mainstream audience. I'll be referencing John Markert, a retired associate professor of sociology as well, since his book Publishing Romance Takes an Overview of All the Romance Publishers.

And I don't know if I need to say this to the audience, but I will have Emma read all of John Boon. This is the son of Charles Boon. So John and Alan are the sons of Charles. And I have a lot of quotes from them, so I thought it would be fun if I just had each of my co-hosts pick a particular Boon. So Emma will be reading John, and Chels will be reading Alan.

Emma

I will not be doing it in English accent. I was like, to be respectful to the Boons? I won't try.

Chels

You need to do like the Daniel Craig from Knives Out, like Foghorn Leghorn. Yeah. Just shake it up.

Beth

In 1908, Gerald Mills and Charles Boon founded their publishing company with a thousand pounds. Both had worked at Methuen & Co, a London publishing house. Mills put up the bulk of the money along with his brother and a few friends. Charles Boon's son, John, said of the Mills' family finances:

Emma

“My Father had no money [...]The main bank came from the Mills family. Kenneth Mills could always ante up a bit of cash, and when the firm was strapped for cash, he’d slip over a few hundred pounds, which was a lot of money then.”

Also now, me editorializing, that's a lot of money now. But I guess a thousand pounds is not that much to start a whole company.

Beth

Yes. No, you're right. But it's still a good chunk of change.

Emma

Yeah.

Beth

Gresco calls Mills middle class. Gresco is the author of The Merchants of Venus, the journalist I spoke about. So Gresco, he calls Mills middle class as the product of public schools and Cambridge, although I disagree with the middle class descriptor, as McAleer references how Mills was the executor on his uncle's estate worth 50,000 pounds. Less is known about Gerald Mills. He married and had no children. In his obituary, he's described as genial and quiet.

Charles Boon's father died when he was 12. So he started working, eventually landing at Matthew in 1893 at 16. Charles Boon worked several positions before becoming the general manager. John Boon attributes his father's background to why he was ambitious. Grescoe calls Charles Boon a "corporate despot," which is likely pulled from his son's characterization of him. They published across all genres initially, including travel guides, craft books, self-help, crime novels, plays, children's novels, and comic and historical novels. Boon took fiction and Mills, non-fiction. Mills had success with textbooks, but Charles Boon marketed his fiction more. Another son of Charles Boon, Alan, said that his father had more initiative than Mills.

Eventually, the partnership divided responsibilities where Charles Boon did marketing and Mills kept them financially solvent. Alan Boon characterized his father's drive this way.

Chels

"My Father had no intellectual interest in books, which was perhaps an asset [...] He stuck to entertainment. He had a natural talent for this business."

Beth

Mills & Boon's relationship with Jack London shaped how Charles Boon hired authors in the future. Jack London got dropped by Methuen because his book, The Iron Heel, was too socialist, and he did it fair and much better at his next publisher. He landed at Mills & Boon because they willingly published everything. Jack London, though, died unexpectedly in 1916 at the age of 40. The firm lost any future novels he would have written, and the Boon's sons theorized that Lennon would have stayed with Mills & Boon, considering his previous experience with other publishers. That same year, Gerald Mills and Charles Boon enlisted in the military, taking away the firm's leadership at a critical juncture. Mills & Boon left their firm in the hands of Charles Boon's aunt, Margaret Boon. They kept their jobs on the board and their salaries, but they didn't have a hand in the day-to-day or find new authors and titles. John Boon said at this time:

Emma

“They were all taken away [...] Aunt Margaret was left in charge, with disastrous results. I don’t think there was anyone else to put there [...] The war really knocked the firm for six [...]" I guess this is a British expression. "It lacked direction, and my father lost his contacts with authors and the book world.” I feel like he's blaming the Aunt Margaret, and it's like, there was a war on.

Beth

He is. But like you said, there was no one else. So in her three-year tenure, she balanced budgets and books sold well. However, she created an extreme production schedule, resulting in one million books sitting in storage unsold. So the '20s brought more financial problems for Mills & Boon. Book production costs had gone up. To offset production costs, more copies had to be sold to break even. Other publishers felt the same financial pressure, resulting in increased competition and commercialization of fiction. The biggest market growth came from commercial circulating libraries, patronized by the middle and upper working classes. Mills & Boon evolved with the market in publishing cheaper editions.

In 1928, Gerald Mills died shortly after surgery for prostate cancer. His will stipulated his shares in the company go up for sale, and Charles Boon scramble to find the capital to get them back. He found a partner in a former office boy at Methuen, Joseph W. Henley, who persuaded his father to give him the money. Henley bought 750 shares from the Mills estate and was named director at the firm. He didn't have a feel for publishing, although took excellent care of the production schedule and other office-type jobs. John Boon said his father didn't want anyone to "dispute his reign."

So we're going to do a little detour now and talk a little bit about Charles Boon. Kind of looms large over the firm. Something I just want to keep in mind is that when we look at people in the past, we squash who they were across decades into one person. Obviously, they're the same person. But I think Charles Boon, the publisher of the 1910s, is different from the 1930s. Although I imagine he had a guiding ethos and perhaps a consistent approach to publishing. He learned as he went, and the firm changed as a result. So

McAleer divides his book into two sections. The first is a history of the company, and the second section goes over themes in Mills & Boon books across the decades. He starts his analysis in the 1930s. Another thing to keep in mind is Mills & Boon built itself to serve commercial lending libraries, like in that time. So hardback novels that someone could borrow from the library again and again for cheap. McAleer says Charles Boon in the '30s didn't have as strong of editorial guidelines and relied on its authors, often young women, as the barometer of public taste.

So I'm quoting from McAleer now. “None the less, there were ‘limits’. Charles Boon, reflecting his personal tastes (like any publisher), preferred ‘wholesome’ and ‘moral’ books, novels that entertained and offered a happy ending. [Alan Boon explained:]

Chels

‘The books in those days were not nearly as stylized as they are today [...] They had a much broader canvas. But I think the old man would not have published a book that wasn’t romantic. His legacy was not the strong moral line. Or marketing. I think it was a certain readability.'"

Beth

And then adds John Boon:

Emma

"A lot of people were doing romance—Collins were very considerable competitors, and Hurst & Blackett. I suppose this was father’s gift, and certainly the gift that Alan had—we hit the right formula."

Beth

McAleer said that, Of the variety of novels published, ground rules did develop. Another dimension of influence is Charles Boon's political views as a Tori. Charles' daughter, Dinah, said, “‘Father was a member of the Constitutional Club, the Conservative club in London. Absolutely King and Country. He used to say, “Right will prevail!” When there was the Coronation, we had a huge crown in electric lights outside the house, and anyone who didn’t look at it was a Communist!’ Dinah adds how he was protective of her: ‘Father was always there to see whether I was talking to anyone at the bus stop. He was totally fearful of white slavery,’ she recalled.” And there's a little explanation. White slavery is a moral panic based on the idea that a white woman would be kidnapped and be forced to be a sex worker.

Chels

Which is the plot of a lot of romance novels.

Emma

Yeah, I was like, this is related.

Beth

Yeah, exactly. I think when we consider racism in publishing, one aspect of it is gatekeepers like Charles Boon with beliefs like this. This is not a man who would consider non-white readers as his audience, especially as all of romance has had this belief that White housewives were their primary readers. Mills & Boon didn't publish a book with a non-white lead until 1981. And even then, it was more... It slipped by rather than the firm actively looked for a story featuring Black characters.

Chels

What was the book?

Beth

It was Blue Days at Sea by Ann Weale, who I think she's a white author. And it was just like... It was like an implied that they were Black because they were in Barbados. But there's no in text saying what color their skin was. But if you look at the Harlequin cover, they look white.

Chels

Well, they're in 1981. So this is the same time that Stephens is doing Candlelight Ecstasy. So they're a few years. Do you think they're just seeing what she's doing?

Beth

I don't know at what point, because I know the timeline with Stephens is difficult. I feel like I would find contradictory years. Did she start at Harlequin in 1982 or 1983? I would see both. But yeah, she's at Candlelight Ecstasy in 1980, and I feel makes an impact right away. She is pushing for diversity at this point, but I don't know. I don't know if those things are correlated or not.

Chels

Yeah, I think maybe probably... I don't know, because 1981 is so close to when she was working at Candlelight. Yes. Anyways, yeah. '80s is a long time. 

Beth

Yeah. And there's a lot happening here. I feel like when we talk about Harlequin, I jump back. We keep jumping back into between 1980 and 1984 a lot. It's interesting.

Chels

It was a big time. It was a big shake-up.

Beth

It was the big romance publishing wars.

Anyway, so I did want to touch a bit on the... I've gone back and forth on how much to include editorial guidelines, but I did want to touch on some broad ones from the 1930s. First, there was Lubbock's Law, named for Percy Lubbock, from his book, The Craft of Fiction, published in 1921. McAleer says that Lubbock argued a reason fiction succeeds is when it is from the heroine's point of view. And Lubbock uses the example of Flaubert's Madame Bovary. My skimmed reading of The Craft of Fiction is that it's about point of view more generally, and that by restricting it to Emma Bovary's point of view, this increases a reader's understanding and sympathy of that character. I don't think it's a gendered argument. However, McAleer says, “Alan Boon recalled that the first book he recommended for publication as a new employee in the early 1930s was called Unconditional Surrender [...]. But it was told from a man’s point of view. It did not sell—and Boon learned a lesson he would never forget. Clearly, reader identification with the heroine would become one of the key components of a successful Mills & Boon romance. It's hard to know, based on what McAleer is saying, if this is the only evidence for why Mills & Boon stipulated that their books be from the heroine's perspective, but this is a guideline they had.

Second, there was the Alpha Man guideline, which Alan Boon said was based on the "law of nature," sorry, which Alan Boon said was based on a "law of nature" and that, quote, “the female of any species will be most intensely attracted to the strongest male of the species, or the Alpha. Mills & Boon heroes always fit this category. For fictional heroes, of course, this was not a new concept: among the many influences and role models for the dashing, mysterious, slightly dangerous hero were Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, Heathcliff inWuthering Heights, Rochester in Jane Eyre, Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind, and Maxim de Winter in Rebecca."

I include this because I find it curious that this is how these heroes are interpreted, but I think calling Darcy an alpha man is inaccurate.

Chels

I was going to say he's the odd one out in that. Which one of these doesn't belong?

Emma

Maxim's a weeny. Yeah, but like... Maxim DeWinter. It's like he's...

Chels

Yeah, Maxim is like a weeny.

Emma

Totally indecisive.

Beth

Yeah, I guess my feel is like there's obviously some distance between the hero and heroine, and that's how these publishers decide to interpret it. Like, the hero is an alpha, but I guess I wouldn't interpret it the same way.

Emma

Yeah, it almost feels like... You know what it feels like is the Darcy myth.

Chels

It does feel like the Darcy Myth, where all of these people are Darcy.

Emma

It's like, have you read these books? Have you read these books? Which it feels like maybe you get this list by talking to women and be like, I love these heroine or I love these heroes, and I'm going to... You know when men are really buff, it's like this is for men. It feels like that, where they're projecting this masculinity on these heroes. That's like, I don't think that these people have read books or are thinking about why women like these five characters.

Chels

It's amazing how long we've been saying alpha hero.

Emma

Yeah. Yeah. I was surprised that it's an old... It's older than I would think that that phrase would be a thing.

Chels

Yeah. Do you think Alan Boon would have done well on AO3?

Emma

What would Charles Boon think of the Omegaverse? Right. He wouldn't like it. All the white slavery on AO3.

Beth

Isn't that a common on—or like I haven't been on...I thought it was more a Wattpad thing, where it's like One Direction kidnapped me?

Emma

My mom sold me to One Direction.

Chels

What I was thinking of is, well, I did mention, I'm like, that's really common in romance novels, and I'm being so dead serious. Tom Huff, Jennifer Wilds.

Emma

Harlequin still publishes sheik novels. I was looking at their lines. They still have a sheik line. How is this possible?

Chels

Yeah, it's definitely a thing. It's a thing. So interesting to know that that's from the top down. But I don't know, maybe he was concerned about it. But then everyone else was like, this is sexy. I don't know. It's just weird, weird, weird, weird.

Beth

Okay. So we're going to jump back into the company's history. By 1929, the best-selling authors at Mills & Boon wrote Romance and Adventure. Their best-selling authors, Denise Robins, Elizabeth Carfrae, Louise Gerard and Sophie Cole, wrote Romantic Fiction. Even though it was the Depression, the '30s was a golden age for the company due to the commercial lending libraries. Just a quick interjection here. While we assume categories, or we associate categories in mass market paperbacks, mass market paperbacks didn't come until the late 1930s, and Mills & Boon didn't print their books in mass market until much later.

Charles Boon had his kids come work at Mills & Boon, as you probably have already summarized because I've already had both sons being quoted frequently. So quoting from McAleer, “There were four packers on the payroll, which numbered 21 by 1939, including Boon’s three sons: [...] (Carol), Alan, and John. Carol and Alan Boon joined the firm in 1931, were 19 and 18 years old, respectively. Both started as clerks: Alan reading manuscripts and processing invoices, and Carol assisting Henley on the production side.” Alan Boon recalled,

Chels

"I remember my father saying, Since you can't get jobs elsewhere, you might as well join the firm. I worked in editorial. There, I picked up any knowledge I have of romances."

Beth

Charles Boon balanced cultivating existing authors with finding new authors. Many saw Charles Boon as talented when it came to finding authors as many went on to be best sellers. As the firm said they would read all incoming manuscripts, they had a high number of submissions. Upon discovering a new writer, Charles Boon encouraged them to write as much as possible. Certain commercial circulating libraries capped out the number of books they received from authors, so Mills & Boon employed pen names so authors could be as prolific as possible. Mills & Boon treated the pen names as separate authors in their marketing.

Earlier, I spoke about Jack Lendon and how his death influenced Charles Boon's later business practices. Despite making it through the financial difficulties of the '20s, John Boon suggested these difficulties, quote, “had a profound psychological effect on his father. Charles Boon was determined to remake his company in order to cushion the impact from future crises. For one, the costs of production were still rising, and archaic arrangements made with printers by Gerald Mills had to be renegotiated. Publishing, moreover, had to be more selective and consistent, and relations with authors and agents nurtured [...] The list should be large and varied, and not dependent on a single star such as Jack London, who could vanish overnight [...] Charles Boon knew he had found a ‘rich ball’ in romantic fiction, and how to follow it.’”

Mills & Boon grew their author list to avoid any one author having the power to financially ruin them. McAleer said the last star author, Denise Robins, to lead Mills & Boon was in 1935. He compares her to Barbara Cartland in publicity and production.

Chels

How else does she like Barbara Cartland?

Beth

I don't know. I don't know much about her.

Chels

How does she feel about virgins? That's the real question.

Beth

That's all she writes. She also founded the... What's the romance novelist? The British version of the RWA?

Chels

Barbara Cartland did? Yeah. RNA?

Beth

Yeah. But Denise Robbins was another founder.

Chels

Oh, she did with her. Oh, okay.

Beth

So they did it together. Yeah. I don't know if... If this is your very first episode, you should also listen to our Barbara Cartland episode, where Chels walks us through the history there. But Barbara Cartland was huge. It was her and Mills & Boon.

Emma

This feels like the threequel in our Barbara Cartland, Janet Daily. This is the next succession of us.

Chels

It was a quote from that Gresco book. It's been ringing I have a thing around in my head ever since I read it, where it was one of Barbara Cartland's sons, maybe like Ian. He was like, Barbara Cartland's Competition was not another author. Barbara Cartland's Competition was all of Mills & Boon. This is how big she was. It was crazy. She's still to this day, if you look up best selling authors of all time, she's way up there.

Emma

Denise Robbins was the first president. I can understand why they wouldn't make Barbara Cartland president. Don't let her be in charge of money.

Chels

She would...You would never get anything done because she never stops talking. You cannot give that woman a microphone.

Beth

She'll make it about herself in five seconds.

Chels

It's actually one of the things I like her the most. There's a lot to dislike about Barbara Cartland, but I'm extraordinarily entertained by her conversational style. It's funny.

Beth

It is. Okay, so to Denise Robbins. So in her memoir, Stranger Than Fiction, Robbins said, The publishing house, Nicholson and Watson approached her. The newly formed firm needed talent, and they offered her a thousand pound signing bonus. And this was without her writing anything. It was just like, Here's a thousand pounds.

Chels

That's a lot of money back then.

Beth

Yeah, still. It's still a good chunk of change.

Chels

What are people getting on the low-end? 10,000? I don't know anything about this. Authors don't yell at me.

Beth

Please don't come for us. We don't know.

Chels

This was a guess.

Emma

Yeah, in 1935, that's definitely more than $10,000. Oh, yeah.

Chels

It's got to be.

Beth

So obviously, they really were making a play for her. And then she's... I think this was a big thing. So this is her and her memoir giving her side of things. So she said, "I did not go behind Charles Boon's back." She added, she told Charles Boon, quote, "the facts," and he didn't make a counter offer and released her from her contract. She said she went reluctantly to Nicholson and Watson. Alan Boon said of the situation,

Chels

“Denise Robins, one of our greatest authors, knew she could sell on her name more than other authors could [...] She was a superstar, and she knew it. Our problem was to find a way to satisfy the superstar. What could Mills & Boon offer a superstar? Superstars weren’t grateful. We went on publishing all the authors all the same.” 

Beth

So as we review the past two decades of the firm, we see they'd steadily moved towards a larger backlist, hired authors to multi-book contracts, and had some authors write under multiple pen names. Eventually, Mills & Boon surpassed its authors in name recognition.

Okay, we're going to circle back to Charles Boon's kids joining the firm. Carol and Alan came on board in 1931. John Boon didn't join the firm until 1938. He stayed only for a year and found editorial to be gruesome. Alan echoes the sentiment saying his father didn't delegate. World War II led to paper rations, so returns reduced, but overall production dropped. All three sons were called up. Charles Boon was in his 60s with deteriorated health, so Henley ran the firm. Like Margaret Boon, Boon, Henley was more of a caretaker and not a publisher, as his talents lay with production, not editorial. In 1943, at '66, Charles Boon died after a second heart attack. Henley took over editorial in the interim. He wasn't tactful and didn't Excel at cultivating new books, only moving them along in the production. Charles Boon's death left a power vacuum that wouldn't be filled until after his sons could return from the war. John Boon told the Sunday Times he wouldn't have gone to at Mills & Boon if his father had still been alive. They did not like their father's leadership. This was echoed throughout McAleer's book.

So paper rationing didn't lift until 1949, inexpensive weekly magazines and paperback books pushed commercial lending libraries into decline. Television entered the entertainment ring to vie for the public's attention and disposable time. The return of the Boon sons meant new roles. The rise of Alan Boon as editor coincided with new guidelines around romance. McAleer says, “Like his father, Alan Boon, aged 33 in 1946, was an editorial genius, and during the 1950s the modern Mills & Boon romance, written to strict editorial specifications, was born, emerging even more as a commodity that bound itself more tightly to its loyal readership.” 

John and Alan Boon worked well together. Carol Boon was still at Mills & Boon. Paul Grescoe, as a reminder, he wrote The Merchant's Venus about Harlequin, calls Carol and Henley "archconservative," and John Boon described the working conditions under them as "Dickensian." John Boon found it difficult to fight against his father's influence on the firm, even after his death. John Boon said to Carol in the late '50s,

Emma

“‘You don’t really care if this business grows and succeeds or not.’ And he said: ‘No, I don’t.’ It was rather depressing” 

Beth

According to Gresco, they pushed out Carol and Henley that decade. So they still work at the company, but in a reduced capacity. I had a hard time figuring out what Carol's role was. But he's still a director.

Emma

I'm just picturing succession. Which one is Shiv? Like, I need to know.

Beth

So the younger Boon brothers fought falling profits in the '50s by increasing the number of books they published. They decreased page length, 188 to 190 pages max, to counter production costs. McAleer said, Alan Boon discouraged authors from experimenting outside of romance. Lillian Chisholm submitted her manuscript, I Shall Be There, to Mills & Boon, saying it was different. Alan Boon wrote back,

Chels

“In recent years, your faithful readers have come to look forward to a special type of romantic story from you. (Your most recent published novel has earned you over £400, and this has been achieved by the fact that readers know when they choose one of your novels that they can rely onreading a special type of story.) We do feel that readers who choose ‘I SHALL BE THERE’ in expectation of enjoying a typical Lilian Chisholm novel would be disappointed, and in these days when sales are not so easily obtained we must always be careful about the future.” 

Beth

Alan Boon let go of older authors who didn't meet the news standard. He returned Lady Josephine Clarke's manuscript, since tastes of the firm had diverged from her style, quote, After 51 novels, she left the firm, and with her exited a distinct class of author, educated and well read that we would not meet again.

Chels

What?

Beth

I mean, I think they used to draw on authors who are upper middle class, someone who has time to write. And I think the next crop of writers will see are from existing Meals & Boon readers and our more working class. Does that make sense?

Chels

Yeah. I think the language of educated and well-bred are throwing me off a little bit because I know it's about class, but that's- McAleer is English as well, so that feels like a very English thing to say.

Beth

Yeah.

Emma

He's saying something that we're vaguely aware of.

Chels

It's like, I'm picking up what you're putting down, you douchebag.

Emma

Describing anyone as well-bred.

Beth

So a similar thing happened with Louise Gerard in 1957. Alan Boon called her manuscript awful and boring and not in line with the quote, "new product."

Emma

Alan, I was I'm rooting for him, and now I'm annoyed.

Chels

Yeah, I have to be like, I'm not Alan. I'm just reading Alan because I'm just like, Man, we won't conflict. You're all making us look bad. You're making us look bad. Okay.

Beth

So Alan Boon modeled how he interacted with authors after his father's approach. He was pretty well known for this, from McAleer: “As Editor of the fiction list, Alan Boon followed in his father’s large footsteps. Fortunately he inherited his father’s charm and stamina, engendering a loyalty and affection from his authors which served the firm well over Boon’s forty years of service. It is impossible to underestimate Alan Boon’s impact, on building a stable of popular and prolific authors, as well as fine-tuning the ‘product’ and editorial policy.” Alan Boon said,

Chels

‘Mills & Boon were different from most publishers [...] We paid a great deal of attention to author relations. We became good friends with the author.’ 

Beth

Jay Blakeney, who joined Mills & Boon as ‘Anne Weale’ in 1955, recalled that several of the older authors were ‘deeply smitten’ with Boon, and suspected he was amused by the attention.”

Jay Blakeney said authors had good reason to admire Alan Boon. He sent flowers to them and congratulations at every opportunity. He heaped on praise and offered tactful criticism. Blakeney recalled she received 30 letters her first year at Mills & Boon and said that most authors wrote twice a week to Alan Boon.

Chels

Can you Can you imagine getting this much publisher attention now? Can you imagine?

Beth

Yeah, it's crazy.

Chels

That's insane.

Emma

I did just look him up because I was like, was he handsome? The answer is no. He looks like an old Britishman. He's not...

Chels

But he has—

Emma

I thought they described him as so charming. I was like, maybe he was very good-looking.

Beth

He was very... I think I said this already. He was very paternalistic the way that his father was.

Emma

Like avuncular.

Beth

Like he would forward money to people if they needed it, or he would help arrange housekeeping, stuff like that. I think in his mind, he's like, I'm going above and beyond, but I think you deserve it. Does that make sense? He didn't have a consistent, these are the work policies and we follow that. It was more like this lending-

Chels

A prolific letter writer.

Beth

Yeah. And I think... Yeah, very prolific. And I think that's why we have these histories. It's because you can look at all these letters between all these authors and make make a history of Mills & Boon.

Chels

I'm just shocked by that. Like, what if that happened today? Like, what if we-

Beth

Right. No. And then also, I think we keep talking about the advances. And every time they still shock me... We're going to talk about the '50s now with the women's magazines, and they paid really well. I cannot imagine magazines paying this well now.

Chels

You'll do it for exposure.

Beth

Yeah, exactly. Mills & Boon had close ties with women's magazines since the '20s, but this relationship shifted in the '50s. McAleer frames the magazines as an extension of Mills & Boon's editorial department, where they offered Mills & Boon novels in serial form. If a novel did well in the magazine, then readers would find the novel.

Mills & Boon found new authors this way. One of the most prominent authors to join Mills & Boon was Lillian Warren, who wrote under three different pen names. McAleer says she wrote in a, quote, “lush, romantic, and somewhat violent and erotic style.” Alan Boon said of her, “She had an immense influence on the romance novel, by the way she portrayed these handsome heroes, the sunshine backgrounds, and her skill in dialogue.” Lillian Warren was already published when she had her agent Juliet O'Hea approach Mills & Boon.

This relationship between the firm and magazine editors further altered the structure of Mills & Boon romances, with Alan Boon saying the heroine and hero got together faster. The magazine editors paid well for serials up to £1,000. They negotiated changes based on their morality.

McAleer said of this, “Some editors, including Winnifred Johnson of Woman’s Weekly and Mary Grieve of Woman, had strong views of relationships and morality which were starting to be decidedly old-fashioned at the end of the 1950s. [Alan] Boon often found himself as referee in a shouting match between magazine editor, author, and (sometimes) agent. To his credit, Boon defended his authors vigorously, and often two versions of a novel were published: the serial form for the magazine, and the original manuscript for the library market.” Editor of Women's Weekly and forced to be reckoned with, Winnifred Johnson, pioneered the marriage in name only, which allowed for sexual tension and action in a morally correct way.

Emma

So it's like marriage of convenience, like they're married and so they can have sex.

Yeah. Which is funny because like that, Emma Darcy I read, she won't have sex with him until after he's married. I'm like, this is the '80s, and it still feels like there's this influence or push that they have to be... I don't know. To be fair, I feel like a lot of the tension of a marriage of convenience is like, when will they fall in love? Because they don't have to fall in love.

Alan is back. I'm back on Alan's side for defending his author so vigorously.

Chels

It's a little bit of a pendulum. But is he a Tory? Is he also a Tory? He's a Tory, isn't he?

Beth

Oh, probably. I don't know.

Emma

I'm still pro-Alan, but I was like, I'm glad that when faced with censorship, he's like, my authors are going to get to write their books the way they want them.

Chels

Yeah, you can put your women's magazine version, the edit, women's edition. I don't know. And then the lending libraries. Something I've been wondering. So in this time, the Mills & Boon books, because when we were talking about Mills & Boon, part of the thing about category is that they're very recognizable. And from what I remember, because I read Gresco's book a few years ago, there's a time where the Mills & Boon books are like, brown.

Beth

Yeah, that's like, they're very famously like the brown bindings.

Chels

The books in brown?

Beth

Yeah. And then I think they had a Mills & Boon logo that was really recognizable. And that people would go to the commercial lending libraries and be like, hey, can I get those brown-bound books? So, yeah.

Chels

Yeah. So this is how category romance is born. Is it basically, it's like you don't know the author, you don't know the story, but you recognize the book.

Emma

Just to grab you one of those books.

Chels

Yes. Yeah. You recognize the book. And And that evolved into how they end up looking now. But, yeah, that's always tickled me. I was just like, oh, it's a brown book.

Beth

Right.

Chels

And I need that. Yes, exactly. Okay.

Beth

Okay. We're talking about the magazines, and we're going to talk a little bit more about Winnifred Johnson. When we consider gatekeepers influencing genre, I think something that bothers us as rakes is when sad story lines get stifled or gatekept out of romance because it goes contrary to the idea that romance should be happy and light. I'm not pinning this idea on Winnifred Johnson, and my feeling is this idea got carried by several editors, but I'm going to use her as an example. So Alan Boon said of her:

Chels

“Miss Johnson wanted first choice of everything [...] She had the magic touch. She had a good idea of what appealed to the public, which was always a strong romance, with never any suggestion of sex. Her idea was to have everything very [cozy] indeed, without any jarring. The characters wouldn’t speak with an accent.’ She frowned, moreover, on swearing and drink, and ‘the unhappy side of life. Miss Johnson would never have the word “cancer” in her serials.”

Emma

Winnifred.

Chels

What does he mean, the characters wouldn't speak with an accent?

Beth

I think that's like a regional... You wouldn't have a regional accent or like—

Chels

Okay. Like you know in My Brilliant Friend, when they speak in dialect?

Beth

Yeah, I feel like the way that you would have a dialect in a book, I think that's what that means. Don't quote me on that. But that was my thought.

Chels

That's a different language. That doesn't actually count—

Emma

I wonder if we wouldn't speak with an accent is also code for—

Beth

Don't have certain accents or regional.

Chels

That was what I was initially thinking. I was like, is this- I think it may not even be literally transcribing an accent as much as these characters are going to be people who are going to speak well.

Emma

I think it's another class, British class thing that we don't get. I think that maybe a metaphor.

Chels

Yeah.

Emma

I also hate the word cozy-Winnifred. I hate when things are cozy. Cozy is so loaded now.

Chels

Yeah. Ms. Johnson would never have the word cancer in her serials. Well, too bad.

Emma

Well, it's like the 1950s. It feels indicative of lots of social... Lots of people died of cancer because they didn't get a cancer check because people wouldn't talk about cancer. Not that this is cancer needs to be in romance for this reason, but it's indicative of a wider spread issue in the 1950s.

Beth

Right.

Chels

Very interesting. And I think also, I guess... I mean, I guess not to defend Ms. Johnson, but I guess I'm thinking of the categories are just so short. We don't really have a lot of space. So I feel like if you did include some heavier stuff in some of these, it's not going to hit right, or it's going to hit weird, or it's going to feel a little jarring, or they didn't dedicate enough time or integrate it. And while I'm saying this, I'm also thinking of there's a Tom and Sharon Curtis. That was very sad that I read. That was a contemporary category. So I'm I'm like, no, you can do it. Anyways, I just walked myself out of that opinion.

Beth

No, no, no. I think it's good that we can... Like why would you do this? She's not like an un... I'm sure she was a smart person. Also, your magazine reader is reading an installment moments, which is very different from a reader sitting down and reading the whole book, and it gets resolved quickly. So maybe, yes, a character has cancer, but you still get your quote unquote happy ending at the end with a magazine. This is coming out. I I don't know what the publishing schedule is.

Chels

If you stop subscribing to July or whatever, you're never going to know that the cancer was a false alarm or however that would have ended up. Or I assume this may be a side character is cancer.

Beth

Right. Exactly. So I think this is a theme we will see with Mills & Boon, and Harlequin is this push towards the most universal audience as possible. How can we appeal to the most people and not do anything to distance an audience?

Chels

Alienate?

Beth

Alienate. Yeah.

Emma

It's so funny. I feel like this is what people talk about now with publishing, is that they're like, they work to the lowest common denominator, as if this is new or booktok's fault?

Beth

Yes. I feel like I'm in my Chels era, because Chels often in our group chat will be like, hey, this rhetoric has happened before. And now after reading all this, I'm like, this is the same conversation.

Chels

No, it drives you crazy once you know. It makes you a crazy person. I can't get on Twitter. I can't get on threads. I can't get on TikTok because I see somebody saying something and I'm like, you sound like you're from the 40s because I heard someone from the 40s say that exact same thing. And it's a little crazy making, but it's good to know. And also just maybe that also keeps me from going in and trying to discuss it too often on its face, because that's the thing about circular arguments is that they never end. And you just get stuck repeating yourself over and over and over again when there are more interesting things to talk about. And that's the trouble with this type of thing. But yeah, anyways, it'll make you crazy. Welcome to the club.

Emma

If you have a reactionary opinion, don't ever assume that you're the first person to react that way. You are the long line to people who are being reactionary and getting.

Chels

Alpha male was being said in the 30s. It's very grounding.

Beth

And I think it helps curb that impulse to feel like you have to be in the conversation always because be like, if this is coming up again, and we've literally already had this conversation, do not have to participate or engage.

Chels

Yeah. It's interesting because you do like, especially if you're like me, where I'm like, well, I know everything. So I'm going to tell you off with specific detail about historical blah, blah, blah. I was being I was joking. I don't know.

Beth

But you know a lot. That's okay.

Chels

Well, no, I mean, but it's just you get stuck talking about the same things over and over again. I think sometimes it's really tempting for me, too. Whenever people are saying really right-wing stuff about...where they don't think they are. They think they're being progressive. They're saying really pro-censorship or type of stuff, especially about dark romance or anything like that. I'm like, I got to stop myself. I'm like, I can't This can't be my beat. I got to let it go.

Beth

Yeah, I get that.

Chels

Yeah.

Beth

Okay. Back to our magazine editors. So Alan Boon saw Johnson as having a finger on the pulse of readers, which was understandably, backed up by her magazine's circulation numbers. So it's unsurprising they allowed her such influence. Johnson also had some more seemingly arbitrary rules. Author Betty Beaty, who started out writing for Women's Weekly, said Johnson found the hero to be the most important. She insisted the heroes be tall and even gave Beaty feedback on one of her books that the secondary hero shouldn't be as tall as the hero, which is... I feel like we're coming for these people, but if you think about it, Superman David Corenswet is taller than Nicholaus Hoult by an inch or two. And I'm like, that feels on purpose. They couldn't let the villain be taller.

Emma

Wait, they filmed—they filmed, they cast all the extras that were around him.

Beth

Yeah, like five-six.

Emma

They had five-six or lower. So he looked even taller?

Beth

I think they were trying to empathize how, not clumsy, but how awkward he's moving through the world?

Emma

Gangly?

Beth

Yeah, gangly. Sorry, that's was a Superman detour.

Chels

This is so funny. Well, the tall It's a hero's thing, too. Yes, that's still a thing. That also has been going on for forever because everyone's like, I'm like, Every brother can't be 6'5. Or like, No, one will be 6'3, one will be 6'5, and then the next one will be 6'7.

Emma

But also the first hero... I have this all the time in series, where the first hero is the tallest person anyone has ever seen. And then the second hero is the tallest person anyone's ever seen. It's even taller than the first one. It's like, all the men in London are 6'5. You have to stop being surprised at some point. They're all 6'5. Every sister is marrying a 6'5 dude. Stop being surprised that they exist.

Chels

That reminds me when I was reading Immortals After Dark by Kresley Cole. One thing that my brain could not comprehend is that every Everybody was the hottest person. And I'm just like, there's so many people, how can they all be the hottest? Who's really the hottest? It's just my brain. And there were like three different kinds of hot. They're like, oh, she's hot like a supermodel or she's hot like a goddess. And I'm like, which is hotter? I don't know which one is hotter. Anyways, romance. It's fun to think about.

Beth

Yes.

Chels

Anyways, my brain is broken.

Beth

I do like how this editorial policy is described, which is glamorous unapproachability.

Chels

Glamorous unapproachability? Yes. Oh, I like that.

Beth

I do actually like that.

Chels

That's how I want to describe myself. It's not true.

Beth

We could all aspire. So in a letter from Alan Boon to Jean McCloud, he said, Johnson's formula boiled down to the heroine not knowing whether, quote, "she [was] pleasing the hero" and a tender scene should be contrasted with some coldness. And I look at this and I'm like, that is actually not a bad conflict. I don't hate this, but I do think this is all that they did. This was the formula.

Chels

I'm guessing these were single POV. Yes.

Beth

Currently, we're all in the heroine's point of view, and this doesn't change until the second half of the '80s, I think.

Chels

Oh, okay.

Beth

That's exciting. We'll talk about that next episode, and I'm sure we'll all have lots of opinions. So back to magazines in general, this dual market meant Alan Boon encouraged his authors to write in a serial style to maximize the reach of their book and make more money. Betty Beaty, she's an author, said serial writing led to book chapters acting as serial installments with a hook at the end in order to maintain suspense. Serials could run 6-12 weeks, depending on the magazine. Alan Boon advised:

Chels

“The serial writer’s principal problem is to keep the heroine and the hero apart for the length of the book [...] One of the most usual ways of doing this is to establish “conflict” between the heroine and hero, rather like a boxing match where there is a great deal of sparring, with an occasional clinch (quickly broken up), which proceeds to the final knock-out.” I love how long this metaphor went on, first of all. Second of all, Alan Boon, Pro Conflict.

Beth

Yes. And we've been talking about with categories. It's like, they are going. They're going fast. And I think it takes a lot of skill to write at this pace and to have that central conflict of this push and pull between two characters sustained over several weeks in this instance, because you're writing to magazine readers. I think this probably really made a lot of great authors, or at least if they were doing this writing, I think this really tightened up their skillset.

Emma

I think we always say that if you read an author's full-length books or the mainstream titles, They came from category. I feel like you can tell and you're like, wow, pacing is such a strong suit of theirs. When some people come up through category, those authors, even when I don't actually connect with the story or it's not my all-time favorite, I'm like, this was an enjoyable read because it's paced well. It moves me through the book.

Beth

Right. So outside of pushing their novels into serial form in magazines, Mills & Boon expanded selling to the rest of the world. Foreign translation fees were small and exposure helped Mills & Boon. They reprinted older titles to meet the new international market. They updated the books by removing dated phrases or technology, like saying the hydrogen bomb instead of nerve gas. So the firm expanded its genres as well and started publishing Westerns again in 1953. John Boon explained to the Bookseller,

Emma

 "After producing 1,892 romances (1,067 new books and 825 reprints) in a row, we all felt like a change [...] we were trying to make our business less vulnerable." I'm like, this is the threshold—I love this.

Chels

We've had 1,892. This is the magic number, guys. 1,892.

Emma

So we have to do something different.

Beth

Exactly. Based on library surveys, Westerns were the most popular genre after a detective fiction. Westerns didn't add much to the bottom line, but they did turn a profit and add it to the backlist. They got back into general publishing as well with practical books aimed at women, like health, cooking, and crafts. They use a magazine mailing list to target customers. I mostly bring this up because Mills & Boon and Harlequin go through several cycles of this, where they're trying to diversify genres, but ultimately, they typically go back to specializing in romance. So I only said this cycle once, but if you read the close histories, each publisher does this many times, and they always give it up.

Chels

They're like, What if we get into science fiction, guys?

Beth

Exactly.

Chels

And they're like, No, back to kissing.

Beth

I guess.

Emma

It's like me every time I try to read another book.

Chels

Oh, yeah. That's actually very relatable.

Beth

So the Boons admitted they were late to paperback publishing. Mills & Boons relied heavily on commercial lending libraries, which went by the wayside in the '50s. They were unsure if readers would take the financial leap. Why would a reader spend two shillings and six pence when it only cost two or three pence to borrow? Furthermore, startup costs for paperback publishing and retail distribution, not Mills & Boons' forte, were prohibitive. Mills & Boons had limited paperback runs negotiated through other paperback firms before Harlequin approached them in 1957. Alan Boon said of Harlequin:

Chels

“[They] asked if we could supply more “nurse books” every month [...] They were not publishers at all. But we saw the opportunity to put the Mills & Boon book into the mainstream. That’s how they suddenly took off."

Beth

We'll talk about Harlequin in our next episode. But for now, the firm formed in 1949 and muddled through general publishing before Secretary Ruth Palmour sent a letter to Mills & Boon in 1957 with the nurse romances that we talked about. Richard Bonnycastle, the general manager, took a hobby-like approach to publishing. Money didn't motivate him. Harlequin didn't interest him that much. His secretary, Ruth Palmour, acted as manager, and his wife, Mary Bonnycastle, as the editor.

Judy Burgess, the Bonnycastle's daughter, joined Harlequin as an editor after she attended college. Working together was a mutually beneficial arrangement for both firms. Harlequin provided the paperback production and a cash infusion, while Mills & Boon provided the novels and editorial infrastructure. Both families, the Bonnycastles and the Boons, liked each other despite editorial differences that came up. Mary Bonnycastle and Judy Burgess regularly turned down previously successful novels like ones by author Violet Windspear, who pushed the envelope on sexual content. Of Doctors Don’t Cry by Elizabeth Gilzean, for example, the word was: ‘Boring, too much hospital detail, not enough romance.’ Of Wynne May’s The Tide at Full: ‘Tasteless, unattractive characters.’ On Circles in the Sand by Marjorie Moore (ironically, first published in 1935): ‘No—marital troubles and nasty people.’”

Emma

This is great. It's exactly what I want from a romance. Marital troubles, nasty people. I love it.

Beth

Paul Grasco notes, quote, “Mary was no pushover. Her shorthand remarks ranged from “ok” through “Will do” to a flat “No,” sometimes with her rationale for rejection. Of Pauline Ash’s Nurse for the Season, she wrote: “Unpleasantly unkind to plain nurses. After all most of our readers are not beauties!” Of Sheila Ridley’s Star of Love: “Poorly written -jumps around too much. Wrong approach to African natives - very poor and dependent on charity - not good in modern times.” Mary cut out all swearing.

Judy Burgess said of Alan Boon, “Alan Boon was a total darling [...] but he had more trouble telling an author it was a dud.” John Boon said of the Bonnycastles:

Emma

"It drove Alan mad to dismiss a novel with three words." But I guess the Boons are also very conservative, and then the Body Castles just are even more conservative.

Beth

Yeah, if you can believe it.

Emma

Because they're all swearing. It's like, I thought Boon was no swearing.

Beth

I think the Boons were maybe a little bit more business savvy and a little bit more like, well, if it just sells, then we're going to chase that.

Emma

It sells. We'll publish that.

Beth

Yeah. So I think they were maybe on the more wholesome side of things. But if they felt like, oh, hey, these books that are maybe pushing the envelope on sex a little bit more selling better, then they would They would chase that. Something Paul Gresco notes in his book, and we'll bring up again next episode, is that some authors felt Alan Boon only read the first and last page of a manuscript before sending it off to the printer.

Chels

Icon.

Emma

I love anyone who doesn't do their job.

Beth

Yeah.

Chels

Well, it starts well and it ends well, so we're going to publish it.

Beth

So lack of editorial support is hard to measure, because we know that Alan Boon wrote to his authors quite a bit. Again, there are several types of editors. Plus, this is many-

Chels

He just like to gossip. That's it.

Beth

Yeah, maybe they're about to say he was like, tell me what's going on with you?

Chels

He's like, your book, we don't need to talk about it. We need to forget about the book. But like, well, what are you doing for Thanksgiving? Exactly. Oh, wait, nothing. Because you're in England. Okay. Sorry. I love speculating about this.

Beth

Also, this is like many relationships across many decades. But I feel like the people Gresco would have talked to, I think, this is a big asterisk, would have come from the '70s, '80s, and '90s. And after I wrote this, I'm like, well, he could have talked to some authors who were writing earlier than that. So I don't know.

In 1964, Mills & Boon made the jump to print paperbacks in Britain on their own after Canada suffered a currency crisis. So they imported Canadian copies of their books to test the market. And John Boon said of the venture:

Emma

“Volume talks. But we didn’t feel that we could finance, or take the risk of financing, a big venture ourselves. When we had the opportunity of buying the Canadian edition at run-on cost, without incurring any production cost, that made a big difference."

Beth

For a few months, Mills & Boon imported 4,000 copies of each title at a rate of four titles every month. John Boon said they could experiment in the market, and after a hiccup or two, it began to go. He said the Harlequin books were appallingly produced.

Chels

Shots fired.

Beth

Seriously.

Emma

So these are books that are printed in Canada and are coming to England?

Beth

So the currency crisis makes it cheaper for them to buy the reprints of their own books, but just to the paperback version. So they want to see how well the paperbacks would sell. So they take advantage of the situation. So they buy 4,000 copies of each title for a few months back to Britain. And then they sell.

Emma

I can see why this history is so confusing, because in your mind, you're like, why is Mills & Boon selling Harlequin copies of Mills & Boon titles? It's bizarre moment. But you did a good job explaining why that would happen.

Beth

No, it takes me a little bit. Even earlier when in the '30s, Charles Boon says to his sons, Hey, you should just come work at Mills & Boon because you are not going to find a job elsewhere. And I literally had to be like, Why is that—oh the depression. That's why.

Chels

Okay, I actually didn't put that together. I thought he was insulting them. He was like, My two loser sons.

Beth

But it's funny because it's like you don't have... There's only so much context they can add. But this happened several times to me while writing the script.

Before we discuss the 1971 merger, I want to touch on how Paul Gresco, a Canadian, versus Joseph McAleer, Brit, frames the alliance between Harlequin and Mills & Boon. Unsurprisingly, these fall on national lines, where Gresco emphasizes Harlequin threw Mills & Boon, a financial lifeline, and McAleer noted the need for Mills & Boon to shift to paperbacks, and it happened to be Harlequin. These are both true. And I don't want to make it seem like they're totally on only national lines. Gresco also sees the same thing that Mills & Boon had the editorial, and they could have just gone with anyone. They both see this, but it's just interesting to me when authors fall on national lines like this. While Mills & Boon turned a profit regularly and It did well enough that it moved offices again, the leadership of the company hadn't made provisions for pensions for themselves or their employees. John said his brother Alan was desperate for a merger for the influx of cash that it would provide for them.

In 1968, the Boon brothers were in their 50s. Carol Boon and their sister, Dinah, wanted to cash out of the company, John Boon said.

Emma

“The possibility, or perhaps, the necessity for a merger or takeover with someone was in our minds from perhaps the middle of the 1960s onwards. [...] The reason for this was, essentially, money. So, we were looking around for suitable partners. In fact, we were wooed by many large firms.”  Yeah, I love them being like, It was the money. It's like, Yeah, this is why people merge.

Beth

So the Boons courted other companies and came close to a couple of deals, but in the end, they merged with Harlequin. It was really beneficial for both firms, although then Harlequin CEO Lawrence Heisey noted Mills & Boon's upper hand in the deal. They had the editorial. They feasibly could have gone to someone and survived just as well without Harlequin. Harlequin purchased Mills & Boon for 3 million Canadian dollars. John and Alan Boon joined Harlequin's board of directors, and Carol resigned as a director of Mills & Boon, replaced by William Wilson at Harlequin. John Boon oversaw business operations in London, and Alan Boon ran editorial for Mills & Boon and Harlequin.

I said merger, but as McAleer notes, quote, legally, the deal was not a merger, as the UK press release stated, but a takeover, as the Canadian release reported. "'They call it a merger, but it wasn’t a merger—it was a takeover,’ Heisey said. ‘The Boons ended up with a lot of shares—they took cash and shares and ‘kickers’ and all that stuff. There was really no doubt about that. But they were very jealous of this idea that they were still independent, which they weren’t—although sometimes it was very hard for them to believe that they had to follow some orders.'"

Okay, so for most of Mills & Boon's existence, publishers that specialized in romance were few. That's not to say they didn't have competition. They did. And other publishers published romance novels. Increased interest in romance from publishers in the '70s has to do with The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen Woodiwiss, published by Avon in 1972. We could really dive into the conditions that led to the Flame and the Flower and the resulting publishing boom, but I'll give just a quick rundown.

First, we have 26-year-old editor-in-chief Peter Mayer of Avon. In 1964, he reprinted a book from the Depression era, Call It Sleep, and took the unusual step of sending out copies for reviews, including the New York Times, before republication. Sales passed a million. You have to think of this through the lens of hardcover good literary story and paperback the reprint knockoff for the masses. The success of Call It Sleep proved that paperbacks could make money. And a quick aside, in Carol Thurston's 1987, The Romance Revolution, she says, Avon couldn't, quote, “compete with wealthier paperback houses for reprint rights to hardcover bestsellers,” so they looked to create their own bestsellers.

Mayer then pushed for original manuscripts to be published in paperback. Enter senior editor at Avon, Nancy Coffey, who picked up Kathleen Woodiwiss' unsolicited manuscript. A common theme in Markert's work is editors using their own taste as barometers for what to publish. Coffey said, "I figured if I keep reading this story, other women would, too". As Harlequin dominated the market at the time, The Flame and the Flower countered the then existing sweet romance novel.

As Markert says of The Flame and the Flower, “In spite of its initial violent sex and subsequent avoidance of sex, Coffey (and the readers) consider Woodiwiss’s novel a sexual, sensual book because of the erotic tension the author sustains throughout.” This led to the divide of sex in historicals and no sex in contemporary until editor Vivian Stephens at Dell in the 1980s, introduced sex into contemporaries under the Candlelight Extasy line. Stephens tested with more sensual novels and then published Gentle Pirate by Jane Castle with an on-page sex scene. The industry credits Stephens and Candlelight Extasy with, quote, “changing the content of the romance novel in the 1980s.” Markert goes on to add, “However, unlike Avon, whose success was built on a few select romance authors, Candlelight Ecstasy’s success was built on a conscious and consistent editorial policy.” 

So back to the '70s and The Flame and the Flower, it sold a million copies. Woodiwiss's success prompted Rosemary Rogers to send in her then unwanted manuscript Sweet Savage Love to Avon, and it went under the Avon's Spectacular Line in 1974. Laurie McBain got published in 1975. Coffey took the opposite approach to Harlequin, where she didn't want to flood the market and limited the number of books published, hence the few select authors approach. Thoughts? Concerns?

Chels

Yeah, no. I think it's very interesting because you can definitely tell the difference between whose category and who isn't, not just because of the obvious, the length of the book, the sexual content, but also the author's names are like... Like, Woodiwiss was a superstar back then. That's not really something that Harlequin and Mills & Boon are doing at this time. Although, enter Janet Daily a few years later, maybe there's a wrench in that a little bit. But she's an outlier. But she's a superstar who left.

Beth

There's other big authors. I guess I was consistently surprised at the number of authors who started in category and then eventually went on to do their own thing. But that's what you did at that point. If you grew bigger than the publisher, then you left because you could make more on your own name than publishing under the Mills & Boon or your Harlequin umbrella.

Chels

Yeah. It's like what Jayne Ann Krentz, Nora Roberts, Janet Daily.

Beth

I think Judith McNaught, too.

Chels

Judith McNaught Yeah. Yes. She submitted to a few. I think Whitney was her first book, but it wasn't published first. I think she had a few categories out before Whitney. Right.

Emma

One of the hardest things to wrap my mind around still is I guess because looking back, I'm like, those are historical romances. If it's historical, to me, it's the same, whether they're having sex on page or not. I'm like, these are all the same. The appeal to me is the same of these older historicals. But how much the publishers view the category audience and the epic, bodice or whatever, audience as separate people. That's the thing that always blows my mind when I read these things, that they view them... There's not overlap. People are not reading Kathleen Woodiwiss and the categories. These are different audiences. And that just always blows my mind, because to me... And how separate they are. I get why that's true, and it seems consistent. It a lot of people talk about them. But the appeal, for me as a reader, really, looking back at them, is very similar to each other. So it always was in my mind that the audience is so different.

Beth

Yeah. I think something we'll keep saying is a publisher will find a particular audience, and then they will do everything to keep that audience. So that's why you have these weird siloed audiences, even though you're, in my mind, are pulling from the same people. They have the same interest in this genre.

Emma

Right.

Beth

So I actually... When we had our obscenity episode and we were talking about what defines a classic, and your response was, well, it's the audience, the audience of these academics. And I'm like, I feel like it was a light bulb moment for me. I'm like, that's how I think a lot of genre gets defined currently. It's who you think your perceived audience is. That's part of how you're defining genre.

Okay. At this point in Mills & Boon's history, it's difficult to separate the two companies since they're really one company now. I have a few additions from jay Dixon's book. Again, she's the former editor who did this exploration of Mills & Boon books across decades. So by 1978, Mills & Boon published 12 paperbacks a month. I think they still sold hardbacks to libraries at this point. Dixon says, They had obviously tapped into a gap in the market with a massive worldwide readership, which increased during the 1980s.

Dixon describes Mills & Boon in the mid-80s as a publishing phenomenon, and selling 250 million books worldwide helped to make Harlequin the world's largest publisher of romances, with 80 % of the world market. Dixon's history is much more limited as her focus is on themes and content of Mills & Boon throughout the decades. Publishers like Bantam tried to enter the British market in the '80s, but couldn't compete against Mills & Boon, and they withdrawn from the market in the same decade.

In talking about gatekeepers, again, I need to reiterate the point of this episode is not thing bad or thing good. It's more the acknowledgement of taste in a publisher's worldview will shape what fiction gets published. Also, I'm only talking about a few gatekeepers isolated to certain publishing firms, so I don't want to overemphasize their influence in publishing at large. Rather, demonstrate how gatekeepers in general influence publishing.

As Dixon worked at Mills & Boon at the start of the 1980s, it's not surprising she talks about editor Jacqui Bianchi. Jacqui Bianchi wrote bodice rippers, The Silver Devil and the Flesh and the Devil, under the pen name Teresa Denys. Bianchi started as an editorial consultant at Mills & Boon, and then became Senior Executive Director.

She passed away unexpectedly in 1988. I have to add, there was a few places that said 1987, so the 1988 year is from Dixon. She worked with a number of authors, including the husband and wife team, Emma Darcy, Emma Goldrick with her comic romances, Sally Beauman, Susan Napier, and Penny Jordan.

In Fabulous at 50: Recollections of the Romantic Novelists Association, 1960 to 2010, there's a section dedicated to Bianchi's skill in nurturing new writers. Penny Jordan was a major author for Mills & Boon at that time. Dixon describes Penny Jordan's books and the general influence Bianchi had on her authors: “[Penny Jordan’s] romances tend to be set in England, and feature a hero who constantly misunderstands the heroine’s actions and is angry with himself for his attraction to a woman who he consequently finds less than innocent. Jacqui was herself an author of historical “bodice rippers” and many of her authors gradually increased the amount of sexual violence in their novels. As an editor put it," and this was a private communication from this editor, to Dixon, quote, “It seems to work as a kind of osmosis - she never says ‘Put more violence in,’ but it seems to happen anyway."

Chels

That's so cool. Sorry.

Emma

Yeah.

Chels

Well, no. No, I mean, what I mean is, we talked about the Silver Devil, and her books are so metal in a way that it... When I was reading them... Because you know that Teresa Denys was a major Mills & Boon editor. And then when you're of like, oh, it's like, at daytime, I edit sweet categories. And night, I'm writing these super violent bodice rippers. But she was actually getting her authors to be a little bit more dark? That's so interesting.

Beth

Yeah.

Emma

Yeah. I mean, that emma Darcy that I read was from 2008, and I was surprised at how much like a bodice ripper it felt. The hero is seducing the heroine to to get her to stay in Italy. He's very intentionally, he's like, I'm going to have sex with her because I'm so good at sex that this will trick her into staying. And it felt very coercive, but like a bottom stripper. It had those dark romance elements, and they get resolved by the end, which was incredible in under 200 pages.

Beth

I think we can see the effects of poor editorial support, or often it's top down from the publisher where they set unreasonable expectations and editors are scrambling to catch up. So I wanted to include this section of Bianchi because even still, I found quotes of people talking about her recently that still reference her and think of her. She was great at her job. She was very supportive. So I think you can see the impact of what a good editor does for an author.

Penny Jordan herself said of Bianchi, “It was Jacqui who urged me to write longer, more complex books and who helped me towards my one and only Sunday Times bestseller status. She was a great ‘hand holder’ when the need arose. She was a writer herself, of course, writing passionately about dark alpha heroes who gripped the reader’s guts. I envied her that talent. I’d wanted to write historical books myself but reading Jacqui’s made me [realize] how much I had to learn before I could be anything like good enough.”

Sally Beauman talks about the support Bianchi offered. “All the writers who worked with her will attest to this, I’m sure: she found and nurtured some of the most original M&B authors in the early eighties, writers who were prepared to alter, adapt and reinvent the previously rigid M&B format.” Author Jenny Haddon echoes how Bianchi supported going beyond Mills & Boon's parameters, although Haddon reiterated it's what others have to say about Bianchi's love of Mills & Boon books, several authors moved on to other publishers after the loss of Bianchi, or moved under another Mills & Boon editor, Frances Whitehead, who later became Editorial Director.

Chels

Just an immense talent. I have parts of both of her books memorized. They're in my head all the time. I think about them. She's a phenomenal writer. I can't imagine. Well, I can tell, obviously, her authors really, really loved her. And I know these names. She worked with a nurtured... Some categories, most famous names. So that's very interesting, very exciting. But yeah, no, I just I just wish we had her for longer because I think she would have done some really cool stuff.

Emma

Yeah, I know this has been best theme of the episode, but I think maybe because we're getting closer to books that we've read or closer to the current moment, it's this gap of I think this is maybe something that is lost amongst a lot of romance readers in the current moment because we are in a period where people don't have a lot of editorial support. But the voice of an editor, as Beth is saying, a tastemaker or a gatekeeper, that these are people who I'm thinking about you've got mail, like when Parker Posey's job, and she's like, Oh, Kathleen Kelly would be great at being a children's book editor. And you get the sense that Kathleen Kelly has good taste in children's books, and that that's meaningful because she's engaged with all these different things and all these different trends and moments, and that wealth of knowledge in what gets published.

I feel like you read stuff now and you have no sense of a voice of a publishing house, or a voice of an editor, or or there being any taste level of what comes out or support. I feel like I would characterize a lot of historicals that I've read that have been published in the past year, last five years, as I would characterize the reading experience of them as unsupported. I feel like the author... It's not edited well. It's not supportive. It feels like there are things missing or the things that are duplicated. If they had an editor, this is the exact thing that would change, and this book would be ten times better.

Beth

We'll talk about this more next episode, but the publishing house Silhouette launched in 1980 as a romance imprint of Simon & Schuster in direct competition with Harlequin. Harlequin bought them in 1984. They still published books under the Silhouette imprint. In 1994, Silhouette books passed Mills & Boon in popularity, leading to Harlequin purging several Mills & Boon authors from their list. They replaced Mills & Boon Editorial Director, Francis Whitehead, with Harlequin Editorial Director, Karen Stoecker. Dixon characterizes Harlequin as taking an authoritarian stance on, quote, "the diversity of storylines," something Francis Whitehead generally left up to the author. Remember, jay Dixon's book was published in 1999, so she says,  “The Canadians are changing this, making writing for Mills & Boon a more journalistic [endeavor] than has been the case in the past. According to Frances Whitehead this determination “to change reader’s interests by ‘educating’ them – with chosen themes” – meant that editors “began to [patronize] and almost to despise the reader ... Obviously the author’s personal views may well come out in her writing, but trying to ‘instruct’ readers never works because they resent it, readers are not fools”

Chels

This feels familiar, too.

Beth

They want readers to act predictably. So it's like they're trying to tell us what we like, oh, you guys like one bed. And it's like all the tropey language that is used in marketing now. That's what it feels like to me. I don't know if you feel different on reading this quote.

Emma

It's describing as journalistic. Describing that process is journalistic.

Beth

I wasn't entirely sure what she meant by that, but I just rolled with it. I guess she just meant it maybe less artistic. I don't know.

Emma

Yeah. Or get the who, what, when, where, why on the page?

Chels

My interpretation of this is that when she's saying a more journalistic endeavor, I think she's meaning current events. So what she's talking about is because later here, she says this determination to change readers' interest by educating them with chosen themes, begin to patronize them, and then talking about authors putting their views into the books. So what I think they're talking about, basically, is maybe the romance novel. We talk about these. These are happen a lot now, too. Is like romance novels where they're like, and maybe the authors aren't doing a very good job at writing their characters. So their characters become this mouthpiece for a social movement or something. And it's boring because it's not a story. It's like someone being like, women need to vote. Here's our speech. So that's my interpretation of that, is I think that it's talking about speechifying or patronize. The word patronize, I think, is what made me think of that. Where it feels like you feel like you're being insult it a little because you're like, I know that.

Beth

Right. Or They have to feel like they tell you that sexism is bad.

Chels

Yeah. I mean, it could mean anything, but that's just... It could be my 2025 lens of... Because I don't like being patronized. I like to read romance novels that know that I have a brain, and I don't need to be told certain things. Yes.

Emma

Yeah, your point that using that as characterization, it's like instead of showing a heroine who is strong and independent, we get told over and over again that she's strong and independent, and you're like, Okay, got it.

Chels

It's like when they say Colin Bridgerton is charming, I'm like, I need to see it to believe it. How many Colin Bridgerton digs can I get in this season? Okay.

Beth

Also, I think to keep in mind is Dixon has an affection for Mills & Boon, and I think she sees Harlequin as a corporate overlord type of feel. So there's that flavor of it, too, when she talks about Mills & Boon. So Dixon adds this, "interventionist" approach might stifle writers and lead to lost readership. She ends on the note that it seems Mills & Boon might lose its dominance in the market after John Boon's death, which was in 1996, and Alan Boon stepped down at the time of her writing, but he did die in 2000, so not long after she published her book.

So I want to talk about another editor, Frances Whitehead, who we already talked about. So she joined Mills & Boon in 1976. During Whitehead's work as an editor, she encouraged Charlotte Lamb to write more sexual books and took on Janet Daily while she published at Mills & Boon. Quote, “Frances also brought in Carole Mortimer, another very popular author, whose plots became less confrontational as in her later novels the heroine tended to be of a more equal status as the hero and so less likely to fight her own desire for him.”

From Daily's perspective, Whitehead, or England, didn't communicate with her. If we look at what Dailey says about working with Mills & Boon in Gresco's Merchant of Venus, she doesn't paint a picture of editorial support. Fred Kerner, Editor-in-Chief at Harlequin in the '80s, said that when he received one of Dailey's Mills & Boon books, it wasn't even 160 pages, shorter than the required 192 pages for the presents line. When Kerner asked Dailey about it, she responded, “I didn’t know that! England never tells me. What do I do?” He gave her some advice on where she could improve, and she said about it, "No one ever told me this before."

A part of me wonders if some of this, a thread of this is simply geography or a mix of things. Long distance phone calls used to cost a lot of money, and there is a time difference, and you couldn't just shoot off a quick email. That's my mild defensive Frances Whitehead. But I believe Janet Dailey, when she says that she didn't get a ton of support from Mills & Boon.

Chels

She said that they published her first book without changing it at all. So she said that it wasn't edited. I mean, that could be her perception of what happened. But that seems insane.

Beth

It's hard with... Because I think a lot of Grescoe's sources were unpublished manuscripts. And I'm sure private communication, or maybe someone didn't want to reveal... I don't want to attach my name to this experience or criticism of Mills & Boon. So I don't know. I guess I'm inclined to believe Dailey. I also think—

Chels

Yeah. No, I do believe her.

Beth

Yeah. From Francis Whitehead's perspective, just you literally have the one American author, and where maybe you could just grab a quick lunch with maybe your other authors. That's just not possible, literally just because of geography with Janet Dailey. Eventually, Harlequin let Whitehead go, along with the director, Robert Williams. The LA Times, set of Francis Whitehead's firing came to how much sex she allowed into Mills & Boon books. And I'm quoting now from the LA Times. “The publisher’s efforts to update the man-meets-woman story prompted the resignation of Managing Director Robert Williams and Editorial Director Frances Whitehead when, insiders say, it was “suggested” to them that their tastes were too old-fashioned.” The LA Times goes on to add that Harlequin ownership pushed for more sex in order to modernize their stories.

Chels

What year is this?

Beth

1994.

Chels

Okay, so they're behind behind because the '80s was when-

Emma

Right.

Chels

Yeah. Okay. Okay, cool.

Beth

So the Guardian takes a more sympathetic approach to Whitehead and William departure, that it seems Whitehead was seen as old fashioned compared to “the explicit sex of Jackie Collins, Edwina Currie and their ilk.” I have to note that both these articles, quote, Barbara Cartland.

Emma

She's got something to say.

Chels

See? I told As ever. If you ask her, she will never shut up.

Beth

Chels, I have a little- She's like, I'll give a quote. I have a comment attached if you want to read what Barbara Cartland says.

Chels

Okay. I wish I could do an impression of her. I can't, actually, but it would be so awesome if I could. Okay. "I think they're making a big mistake going down that road," she said. "I've read one or two of their books and they were very nice, very clean, very pleasant for young girls. Gradually people are [realizing] that sex, sex, sex is wrong. I think the less filth that's put on the market the better." What a classic. You've got the repetition. She loves that. You've got the filth. If she said soft porn, it would have been a full circle. But she... Yeah. Yeah, I I have a strange affection for that horrible woman. She's a nice person. But she's so entertaining.

Beth

She's just so interesting. She's an interesting person, even though she's horrible.

Emma

I said this during the Barbara Cartland episode. Consider if your TikTok sounds like Barbara Cartland.

Beth

People do.

Chels

They do. They're not as funny, though. That's the thing. They're not as funny, and they're not as interestingly dressed. So it's like we have the worst of all three worlds. It's like, Barbara Cartland light, but it's not even funny. So it's just like, what are we doing here? Now you're just a bigot.

Emma

At least turn an outfit, like serve..serve us something.

Chels

Wear one color for your entire life, and then we'll talk about that.

Emma

And all your paste jewelry.

Beth

She had two. She wore pink and then the blue, right? It was her two colors.

Chels

She was pink and baby blue, which are baby colors, I guess, because it's the light pink.

Beth

Yeah. Interesting.

Chels

Yeah. But she was mostly... I've only seen a few pictures of her in the blue. I think, what was it? I think she was maybe in her 40s or 50s when she pivoted to pink, because on our older picture, she doesn't look like that. I don't know. Anyways.

Beth

We love Barbara Cartland. Well, we don't, but she's interesting.

Chels

We don't. We don't love Barbara Cartland, but I can talk about her almost as much as she can talk about herself.

Emma

Perfect. I'm glad she existed. I think net good for us. She's fascinating.

Beth

She's fascinating.

Emma

Where would be without her?

Beth

Okay, so both newspapers note how Mills & Boon wished to update its image and connect with modern readers. “But with the departure of Ms Whitehead and Mr Williams, who have been largely responsible for shaping M&B’s success, authors of such classics as A Perfect Little Fool, Passionate Choice, Scarlet Woman and Whirlpool of Passion fear more dramatic changes lie ahead as M&B, which has 4 million regular readers in Britain and sells a book every two seconds, continues to update its image.

I see this move as the final cementing of editorial power to Harlequin. It was a marketing-editorial divide for a while, although Harlequin had been building up its editorial department after the Mills & Boon purchase. After Whitehead had left, an unnamed Mills & Boon "insider" from The Guardian article said, quote, “Things are edgy at the moment [...] some people are very concerned about Frances leaving. She was there for 20 years and was very much responsible for building the present character of Mills & Boon fiction. We don’t quite know what’s going to happen.”

Okay, so we're going to abruptly end in the 90s. But we'll talk about Mills & Boon more next episode, and more changes that happened, we'll go over the history of Harlequin, and talk about Vivian Stephens again, and her blip of time at Harlequin, competition of Silhouette, and then the future of mass market publishing. We'll end on that next episode.

Chels

A big agenda.

Beth

Yes, big agenda. So final thoughts, comments, concerns about publishing? I don't know.

Chels

Yeah. So I guess final thoughts. It's always so interesting to see, first of all, how conservative all of this starts out and continues to be. And I do think also one thing that I I think of a lot when people talk about for women, by women, and Romance is some of these books, Merchants of Venus, and these other books about the history of romance publishing, because I don't think that was ever true. From the top down, you've got these guys. And you do have Mary Bonnycastle, but Mary Bonnycastle is maybe not the feminist icon we really want to be looking at.

Beth

She's also not, like, the way you think of an editor, I don't want to downplay her work, but she just edited existing books to her taste. She wasn't nurturing an author and working with that author. That wasn't the structure of Harlequin at the time. So again, I don't want to downplay her work, but yeah, very much she's not... Yeah, I don't know.

Chels

Yeah. And so I guess for me, it's like when you're picturing these business suit guys who don't really read romance as much. If you're Alan, you'll read two pages of it. Maybe don't read romance, but have this idea of who they want to buy it and what that person wants. And it's just so interesting. I think that it does poke some holes into the romance mythology. It's the whole things. These are all business decisions. It's interesting. It's interesting to think about.

Beth

Yeah. If anyone wants to read John Markert's book, I would recommend it. But he talks about this at large in the romance publishing history, especially during that publishing frenzy that we have in the late '70s, early '80s, where you have people who were formerly secretaries to editors, and then they get slotted into these romance editor positions. Because publishers look down on genre in general, and so romance is genre fiction. So they just put these people in because they didn't care. So you can't imagine those people are getting a ton of support or like, how can we help you become a better editor? Also, they had a lot of insane production schedules that they had to follow. So it's like, yeah, these men would slot these women into editing roles, but not setting them up for success, really, or supporting them in a great capacity.

Emma

Yeah. And I think thinking about this history, I think it's always helpful to think about ways that things are trends are coming from the top down. I think we often assume that it's... Sometimes I'll ask on TikTok, incredibly, why is this a thing? And people will be like, that's what people like. And I'm like, I don't like it. I'm telling you, I don't like it. So all the heroes being tall. I'm always asking for shorter heroes. And it's like, that's not my taste in men. I would be interested in reading books that had different body types and more diversity of body types in heroes. And it's like, no, they There are people who are making decisions. It's not that every romance reader all has the same taste in heroes. It's that there are people who decided that we all have the same taste in heroes. And it's like, that's easier to... It's easier to make a product if it's consistent with their smaller variations between them. And Beth talks about this all the time, like with comp titles, where it's hard to escape the comp title that you have to market your book in the context of things that have already been successful.

And this is that to the extreme. It's not even going to cross the editor's desk unless it fits the formula. Which, again, like Beth said, it's not good or bad. I think category is so interesting in such... Categories that I've read, I've really enjoyed. But it is good to acknowledge this is the structure that these books are being published They're men in suits making decisions about what's going to be in the book, how it's going to be published, who's going to read it. You may think that that's your taste, but that your taste that's individual is influenced by a system.

Beth

Yeah. And you talked about, you're like, well, I want to read bodies other than tall men. I'd be interested in a bald guy or a fat guy. And I can see, say an editor takes a chance on a book like that and it doesn't sell well, they'll look at that one thing they changed and pin it all on that. This is consistent across all art. It's like in movies, TV shows, it's like, oh, we changed that one thing and that thing didn't work. So we're going to blame the thing we changed rather than anything else. Maybe that book didn't get proper editing or the marketing wasn't great, or maybe it just wasn't a good book. It was regardless of the thing that they changed.

So publishing is just very inherently conservative. They don't want to rock the boat. Typically, they don't want to change too much. They want consistent success and consistent profits. So with that in mind, it makes a lot of sense when you consider the books that get published. Or why is that thing getting published? Oh, one thing was very, very popular. So we're going to copy that and beat that to death until that no longer makes money. So anyway.

Chels

We're talking about romantasy again, I guess.

Emma

Yeah. I'm was just thinking—

Beth

Please bring up romantasy.

Emma

I mean, yeah, all the complaints about it. It's like, in Until people stop buying the books, it's going to keep happening. Especially if you're buying them to hate read them. Stop doing that.

Beth

Also, I don't want to throw an entire genre under the bus. I'm sure within romantasy, I don't read romantasy, so I don't know what the biggest titles are. But it's like, oh, we want to all be that one book. So every book in that genre right now is copying whatever the most successful thing was. It wasn't like, oh, let's really innovate with the genre and see what else we can do. No, it's like, we're going to copy the popular thing.

Chels

Yeah. Well, I think that's where the portmanteau has shifted. Because if you were used to say, if you were writing fantasy romance, maybe this would be, I don't know, Grace Draven or something like that. But now if you're saying you're writing romantasy You're saying that I'm writing in the vein of ACOTAR and Fourth Wing. It's signaling something different, I think. Although, I don't... Why am I acting like I don't know? I don't know. Great episode.

Beth

I think that was a good point. Thank you. Okay, we'll wrap up. So thank you so much for listening to Reformed Rakes. If you'd like bonus content, you can subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/reformedrakes. You can follow us on Twitter, Blue sky, and Instagram for show updates. The username for those platforms is at reformedrakes, or email us at reformedrakes@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners. Please rate and review us on Apple and Spotify. It helps a lot. Thank you again, and we will see you next time.