Celebrating Women in Romance
March is Women’s History Month, so it seems an appropriate time to celebrate some of the women who have made significant contributions to romance fiction, a genre largely written for women by women. Each of the following women helped to shape in some way the romance novel as we know it today.
1. Jane Austen
Nearly two hundred years ago she wrote six love stories, six tales of couples caught up in courtship journeys that culminate in HEAs, and readers have been falling in love with Jane Austen’s characters ever since. Pride and Prejudice (1813) with the beloved Lizzie Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy is routinely termed “the best romance ever,” although Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, the autumnal lovers of Persuasion (1818), and the mismanaging Emma (1815) and her Knightley are also great favorites.
2. Charlotte Brontë
From its publication in 1847 to the present, Jane Eyre has been a reader favorite. Brontë’s passionate, intelligent heroine who is forced to choose between great love and faithfulness to her moral code, her brooding, tortured hero with a dark secret, and their reunion against all odds have inspired countless romance writers.
3. E. M. Hull
The Sheik (1919) was the first novel of Edith Maude Hull. It became one of Publishers Weekly’s top ten best sellers for 1921 and 1922 and sold over 1.2 million copies worldwide. Sons of the Sheik (1925) was almost as popular as the first book. Perhaps Hull should be credited with starting connected romances as well as with creating an iconic alpha male hero.
4. Georgette Heyer
She was only nineteen in 1921 when she wrote The Black Moth, a Georgian romance, and started the subgenre known as historical romance. Georgette Heyer would go on to write more than thirty Georgian and Regency-set historicals, Twenty-first-century romance readers continue to delight in her stories. Devil’s Cub, The Grand Sophy, Frederica, Venetia, These Old Shades, and Arabella top the list of favorites. Characters patterned after Heyer’s heroes and heroines populate romances rolling off the presses every day.
5. Faith Baldwin
She was the Nora Roberts of her day. Her first book, Three Women, was published in 1926. A decade later she earned over $300,000 (more than $4 million in today’s terms). Many of her books were made into films, and in the early days of television, she hosted a weekly Saturday afternoon anthology series on ABC network, entitled Faith Baldwin’s Romance Theater. In the 1950s she was still going strong, earning over $2 million, with sales over 10 million in all editions. Her last novel, Adam’s Eden, was published the year before her death in 1978.
6. Barbara Cartland
The most prolific romance novelist of all time, Dame Barbara wrote an astonishing 723 books that sold an estimated one billion copies over her long life. Only Shakespeare and Agatha Christie have outsold her. Her virginal heroines and simplistic stories seem a far cry from today’s romances, but many of today’s romance readers and writers admit to having read a Cartland or a few dozen back in the day. Her own life was far less decorous than her heroines’, including divorce, scandal, and rumored affairs. She died at 98 and was buried under a tree planted by Queen Elizabeth I.
7. Nancy Bruff and Frances Shelly Wees (and the thousands of writers that came after them)
Harlequin published its first romance in 1949, Bruff’s The Manatee was Harlequin #1, but Honeymoon Mountain by Frances Shelly Wees (Harlequin #8) was closer to the conventional Harlequin romance. Today, Harlequin remains the largest publisher of romance novel series – publishing over 500 new titles every month – in 25 languages – and with distribution in every major market around the world. The company also encompasses the work of nearly 1,500 authors of romance fiction.
8. Mary Stewart
In 1955, Mary Stewart’s first book was published. Madame, Will You Talk? is considered by many to have been the first popular novel to successfully integrate the mystery and the love story. Stewart, “the mother of the modern romantic suspense novel,” is one of the authors frequently named as an influence by today’s established romance writers. Romance scholar Pamela Regis says, “”Stewart’s influence extends to every writer of romantic suspense.”
9. Kathleen Woodiwiss
The romance revolution began in 1972 with Avon’s publication of Woodiwiss’s The Flame and the Flower. A generation of romance readers dates the start of their love affair with the genre from their reading of this book. It sold 2.35 million copies, but more significantly it showed the hero and heroine in the bedroom. It also began the now common practice of publishing single-title romance novels as paperback originals.
10. Nora Roberts
Irish Thoroughbred, Nora Roberts’ first Silhouette romance was published in 1981. Roberts’ work ethic and productivity have become legendary in the more than twenty-five years since that first book, but her contributions to the genre are greater than mere numbers of books written can measure. A founding member of RWA, she was the first writer inducted into RWA’s Hall of Fame for winning multiple Ritas in long contemporary romance (category); she was inducted twice more, in romantic suspense and contemporary single-title romance. She has won nineteen Ritas. The first Silhouette original title to hit # 1 on The New York Times bestseller list was The McGregor Grooms; the first category romance ever to hit The New York Times bestseller list was Perfect Neighbor; the first Silhouette single title to hit The New York Times bestseller list was The McGregor Brides. Every Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb title released in 2008 hit The New York Times bestseller list, a continuation of a record begun in 1999. Roberts has sold more than 300 million books. Her reissues redefined the shelf life of romance novels. She continues to be a loyal and eloquent representative of the romance genre.
11. LaVyrle Spencer
Spencer’s second novel, Hummingbird, had already been rejected by both Avon and Jove (although Jove later published it) for having “too much humor” and for being “too narrow in scope” when Avon rejected her third book, a mail-order bride tale, as well. The publisher was leery of The Endearment because it featured a hero who was a virgin, a heroine who was not, and the hero as protagonist. Pocket published The Endearment in 1982; it won a Rita in 1983. Since then, virginal heroes and experienced heroines have become favorites with some readers, and the hero’s pov is widely accepted. Hummingbird, with its strait-laced Victorian virgin and mustachioed lothario and unsatisfactory first-time sex, has become one of Spencer’s best-loved titles.
12. Jayne Ann Krentz
Krentz has written 150 books under seven names, although she has limited herself to three in recent years: Jayne Ann Krentz for contemporary romantic suspense, Amanda Quick for historical romantic suspense, and Jayne Castle for futuristic/paranormal romantic-suspense. In 1986, Sweet Starfire became the first futuristic romance, combining elements of traditional romance novels and science fiction. In 1992, she became the editor and a contributor to Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance, a pro-romance essay collection that declared romance a subversive feminist genre that celebrated women and their power. The collection won the prestigious Susan Koppelman Award for Feminist Studies.
How many of these celebrated women have you read? What other romance writers do you think have a place in the history of romance fiction?
This is a great list!
Thanks for sharing!
What a fantastic post, Janga! I loved reading about these wonderful women – thanks so much! I inhaled Georgette Heyer and Mary Stewart in high school at the same I was studying Austen and Bronte. And I’ve read JAK, Nora, and even a Barbara Cartland, or two. But a few of the others are completely new to me.
I would also add Fanny Burney to the list, who wrote her dramatic romances in the late 18th, early 19th century. She was the most popular novelist of her day, and Austen refered to her in her own books. And Victoria Holt – I loved Mistress of Mellyn and Bride of Pendoric.
This is a great blog! I love reading your stuff, Janga; I’m always learning something new.
I loved The Endearment. I can’t imagine a romance world without it.
I would probably add Sherrilyn Kenyon to the list. I know she’s not the first to have romance stories with paranormal elements, but I think she is the one who did it so well that now everyone wants to do it.
And I might toss Margaret Mitchell on there. She only wrote the one book–but here she wrote the ANTI-HERO heroine, Scarlett O’Hara and the best Alpha male rake of them all, Rhett Butler…okay, so they’re not together at the end, and that’s probably the reason most would not term it a romance…but I think if she’d lived, she would have written a sequel herself and hooked those two up.
Great article, Janga! I loved the pictures of each author. I like the idea of a Celebrate Women in Romance Day as part of Women’s History Month. I shared your lovely idea on the JQ/EJ bulletin board.
I’ve read all the ones from Woodiwiss down and of course read Bronte back in my school days. I admit I haven’t read Austen but as we all know, that doesn’t mean we don’t know the stories and love her.
I think Jennifer Crusie will go down in record books. And I’d add Dorothy Garlock, Julie Garwood, and Elizabeth Lowell to those who have stood the test of time, written across genres and time periods, and just have downright incredible talent.
Thanks, Keira. I had fun writing it.
Vanessa, Fanny Burney would make a great addition to the list. I did consider some of the American authors of 19th century domestic fiction, but I think I’m going to use them in a separate blog at some point. And Eleanor Burford Hibbert! She was the most amazing writer. She wrote 200 books or so under seven names, Victoria Holt; Jean Plaidy, and Philippa Carr are just the best known. She wrote nine books before she was published, and she was in her mid-50s when she published her first Victoria Holt, which she continued to write for more than thirty years. What a story!
Hellion, I didn’t even think about the paranormal. I’m not sure where it begins. An argument could probably be made that debts are owed to Mary Shelley. Kenyon and Ward both have been major contributors to the subgenre. And my mother would have totally agreed with you about Margaret Mitchell’s plans. She was sure Mitchell would have written Scarlett and Rhett their HEA had she lived.
Cheryl, glad you enjoyed the blog, and thanks for the promo on the EJ/JQ board. And I support that holiday.
Terri, I had Garwood on my original list, but it was way too long. I think she was among the first to weave humor into non-comedic stories.
Wow, I have learned so much from this blog, Janga! I didn’t even know what Victoria Holt’s real name was, although I knew she wrote as Jean Plaidy and Phillipa Carr. Not published until her mid-fifties, and then to go on to such a fantastic career – inspiring is right! Especially for those of us reaching those, ahem, ‘middle years’.
Finally a list in which I’ve read at least one (and many more) from the authors. Many have already added the names I would have such as Victoria Holt (I cut my romance teeth on her books), Crusie and Garwood.
Really a fantastic list and a real tribute to women in romance fiction.
Thanks, San. You know Crusie is an interesting figure in terms of romance history. I think what she has written about romance is as important, maybe more so, than her romance fiction.
Vanessa, I’m sorry I was unclear. Hibbert first published in her 30s–under her maiden name Eleanor Burford first I believe, but she was in her mid-50s when she first published as Victoria Holt. She was a decade older still when she first published as Philippa Carr. I’ve always thought someone should write a good biography of her. I’d certainly read it.
Got it – thanks, Janga. I was muddled, not you!
Great blog, Janga! I know it was hard for you to whittle your list down. If we named everybody we loved we’d still be blogging about it this time next year!
I second the nomination of Fanny Burney. I like Evelina just as well as some Austen novels (though not Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion). And she wrote a great bluestocking in Evelina, though not, alas, the heroine.
Marion Chesney will always have a special place in my own personal romance pantheon. I used to inhale her regencies back when I first discovered them. And a lot of what I know about the period I learned from her. Rhyming slang. Boxing cant. Gentleman Jackson’s. Dampened petticoats…good times
Also Patricia Veryan, who seems all but forgotten now but whose books I eagerly scanned my library catalog for every couple of weeks back in the days when there was no internet to tell us when our favorite authors next books were coming out. Plus, she wrote heroes who remain in my memory years after I first read them. August Falcon. Roland Mathieson. Tristram Leith.
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Fabulous blog, Janga! I think I would add Victoria Holt, Mary Stewart and maybe Phyllis Whitney. I grew up adoring their Gothic romances!
Anya Seton’s novels (like KATHERINE and GREEN DARKNESS) were more mainstream historical but usually had some fascinating romances as well. And I used to love Gwen Bristow as a kid. She wrote some wonderful “wagon train” romances.
Interesting, I hadn’t heard of some of these authors. As a Mary Stewart fangirl, I have to point out that you have her picture under Barbara Cartland.
Actually, MaryK, I started with pictures and followed with paragraphs about the two authors pictured. Pictures 7 and 8 are the Harlequin 60th anniversary logo and Mary Stewart. The paragraphs that follow are about Harlequin romance (#7) and Mary Stewart (#8). Perhaps I should have captioned the pictures to avoid confusion.