The Grandmother of Category Romance
Mills & Boon is legendary in the annals of Romancelandia. It would be fair to say that Mills & Boon is the progenitor of the modern category romance.
Gerald Rusgrove Mills and Charles Boon founded the company in 1908 in the United Kingdom as a general publisher of books.
Fortuitously enough, it just so happened that the first book they released was a romance, Sophie Cole’s Arrows from the Dark.
When Mills and Boon opened their office in London’s Convent Garden for business they worked hard for years to cultivate an air of respectability. But over time, as the publishers dedicated themselves more and more to romance–a “formulaic” simply, written formula,
However, romance would not be the publishing house’s primary focus until the 1930s.
Instead. many “mainstream normies” and pretentious literary critics lambasted the publishers for their predictable fairy tale romances that always ended happily ever after. Well, to many of their to the detractors’ surprise, that is exactly what made Mills and Boon a worldwide sensation.
M & B sold their romances mainly to lending libraries. They produced brown, hardcover books which were instantly recognizable.
Their legendary stable of talented romance writers from all over the Anglophonic world has been steaming up readers’ imaginations for over 110 years. Unsurprisingly, the emotional, angsty, and floridly written tales with dominant, charismatic heroes were an immediate hit.
To this day, a Mills & Boon book is sold in the UK every three seconds.
So universal is the publisher’s appeal, it’s even scored a place in the Oxford English Dictionary, with the definition “a (type of) popular romantic novel”.
MILLS & BOON IN NUMBERS OVER THE LAST 50 YEARS
- 1 book is sold every 6 seconds in the UK
- 16% share of the UK romance fiction market
- 1,300 authors across the world
- Translated into 30 languages and sold in 150 countries
- 700 books published every year
- 30,000 kisses, 35,250 tender embraces, and an unknown number of lovemaking scenes (although I would guess depending on which category line, the total has to be at minimum 5,000 -7,500 instances resulting in about 1,000 secret babies or pregnancies) and 10,325 weddings in 114 years’ worth of books
- 100 million books sold by Mills & Boon author Penny Jordan alone
- 200 million books sold a year
The M&B Romance
Initially, Mills & Boon’s romances were almost always told from a third-person perspective that focused on the heroine.
Usually, they left the hero’s thoughts unknown. Only through his words and deeds did the heroine, and thus the reader, know how he felt about her. The stoic, inscrutable hero would be a staple of the genre for decades.
Tropes and Plots
Sheiks
Mills & Boon was founded in 1908 by Gerald Mills and Charles Boon. Although they initially did not focus on romance novels, over the years the Mills & Boon imprint has become synonymous with romantic fiction: the Oxford English Dictionary defines Mills & Boon as a ‘trademark used to denote an idealized romantic situation of the kind associated with the fiction published by Mills & Boon Limited: the Mills and Boon tall, dark stranger’. After a merger with Harlequin in 1971, the company has enjoyed unbounded success: according to the company, a Mills and Boon book is sold in the UK every 3 seconds and it is estimated that romantic fiction accounts for 20 per cent of the fiction books retailed in the UK – that is one in every 5 fiction books sold. The company claims a huge global readership, selling 200 million books worldwide each year, distributing in 109 different countries. To put this in context, all seven of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter titles, including three companion books are estimated to have sold 450 million copies. If Mills & Boon continue to publish at the same rate (and evidence suggests that their sales remain buoyant even in a global recession) Mills & Boon could sell this many novels in just over two years. Although not published by Mills & Boon, E. M. Hull’s The Sheik (1919) has been widely accepted as the first formula ‘sheikh’ romance. I define sheikh romance as a love story set in the deserts of the Middle East or North Africa, with a sheikh or sultan hero and almost always a western (which is usually British, North American or Australian) heroine. A typical sheikh romance might begin with the forced marriage of hero and heroine following her abduction to his desert kingdom: an experience interspersed with midnight horse-riding in the desert, camping in a Bedouin tent, getting rescued from a sandstorm, bathing and being luxuriantly massaged in the sheikh’s jewelled palace, and enjoying a host of other Orientalised luxuries. The success of Hull’s The Sheik spawned many more sheikh novels, including the first Mills & Boon sheikh romance, Louise Gerard’s A Sultan’s Slave (1921). Mills & Boon followed this up with Desert Quest by Elizabeth Milton in 1930, Maureen Heeley’s The Desert of Lies and Flame of the Desert in 1932 and 1934 respectively and Circles in the Sand (1935) by Majorie Moore. Sheikh romances seem to decline in popularity during the 1940s, at least in terms of Mills & Boon publication, but return in the 1950s and 1960s. At least three original sheikh titles were published by Mills & Boon in the fifties, six in the sixties, growing to 12 in the seventies, 17 in the eighties and 24 in the nineties. However in the 2000s the growth in popularity was exponential, with over 100 original titles published by Mills & Boon from 2000-2009. Even taking into account the increase in the number of novels published, this is a substantial increase, suggesting a significant contemporary market for these sheikh romances. Although sheikh titles appear in many different series, the majority of recently published sheikh titles in the UK have been part of Mills & Boon’s flagship ‘Modern Romance’ series which began in July 2000. From the beginning of the ‘Modern Romance’ series until December 2009, Mills & Boon published 57 original sheikh titles in the ‘Modern Romance’ series [1] and these are the texts I focus on in this paper.
Mills & Boon and Harlequin Ltd
A UK-based company, M & B never directly released their books in North America. They distributed their books through Harlequin. In 1971 Harlequin Ltd bought out M & B.
Like Harlequin, they currently publish several lines.
| LINE |
|---|
| Mills & Boon Blaze (Australia) |
| Mills & Boon Cherish (Australia) |
| Mills & Boon Desire (Australia) |
| Mills & Boon Essence (Australia) |
| Mills & Boon Forever (Australia) |
| Mills & Boon Heart (Australia) |
| Mills & Boon Heartwarming (Australia) |
| Mills & Boon Historical (Australia) |
| Mills & Boon Intrigue (Australia) |
| Mills & Boon Medical (Australia) |
| Mills & Boon Modern (Australia) |
| Mills & Boon Romantic Suspense (Australia) |
| Mills & Boon Sexy (Australia) |
| Mills & Boon Western (Australia) |
| Mills & Boon Best Seller (reissues) |
| Mills & Boon Blaze |
| Mills & Boon Blaze 2-in-1 |
| Mills & Boon Cherish |
| Mills & Boon Cherish 2-in-1 |
| Mills & Boon Desire |
| Mills & Boon Desire 2-in-1 |
| Mills & Boon Enchanted |
| Mills & Boon Heartwarming |
| Mills & Boon Heroes |
| Mills & Boon Heroes 2-in-1 |
| Mills & Boon Historical |
| Mills & Boon Intimate (Australia) |
| Mills & Boon Intrigue |
| Mills & Boon Intrigue 2-in-1 |
| Mills & Boon Medical |
| Mills & Boon Medical 2-in-1 |
| Mills & Boon Modern Romance |
| Mills & Boon Modern Romance Extra |
| Mills & Boon Modern Romance Heat |
| Mills & Boon New Romance |
| Mills & Boon New Romance 2-in-1 |
| Mills & Boon Nocturne |
| Mills & Boon Presents |
| Mills & Boon Riva |
| Mills & Boon Romance |
| Mills & Boon Romance (Australia) |
| Mills & Boon Romantic Suspense |
| Mills & Boon Sensual Romance |
| Mills & Boon Special Edition |
| Mills & Boon Special Moments |
| Mills & Boon Special Moments 2-in-1 |
| Mills & Boon Super Historical |
| Mills & Boon Super Romance |
| Mills & Boon Supernatural |
| Mills & Boon Temptation |
| Mills & Boon Tempted |
| Mills & Boon Tender Romance |
| Mills & Boon True Love |
| Mills & Boon True Love 2-in-1 |
Mills and Boon Covers
Links
- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11096323/Once-considered-terminally-trashy-Mills-Boon-novels-legions-avid-new-fans.html
- The Guardian: The Art of Romance
- M & B UK
- https://www.stylist.co.uk/books/retro-erotic-fiction-the-best-old-school-mills-and-boon-titles/167511
- Wikipedia
- https://allaboutrudy.org/2016/06/