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In 1908 Gerald Mills and Charles Boon founded the publisher Mills and Boon. Initially, they were a general publisher and published all sorts of fiction - P.G. Wodehouse was one of their authors.
But as the 1920's and 1930's dawned, they began to specialise in a niche - romances written by women for women. The word "niche" implies fiction that is hardly read, but right from the Great Depression to the present day, they sold millions of books to women seeking a little fantasy and escapism. They now sell 130 million books a year.
The Mills and Boon romance remains a conservative genre in that the woman is seeking true love rather than mere romps, and the man is seeking a soul-mate, and it always ends with marriage. No "realism" here about ending up alone. Yet, in other ways the books are surprisingly modern. Right from the Depression era, the heroines in Mills and Boon romances always had jobs, even while the women reading them did not. And naturally the books evolved in the way they portrayed sex. In the 1960's they were portraying sex between married couples, and by the 1980's they featured sex before marriage and more inventive sex scenes, including oral sex. Strangely, there seems to be a reverse backlash going on now, with more virgins being portrayed in the novels than was the case in the 1980's and 1990's (though the amount of sex in the books has increased - clearly it's OK to have very raunchy sex as long as it's with your true love!)
Mills and Boon have also expanded their range, with the traditional "sweet" romances selling alongside imprints such as "intrigue" (romances linked to mysteries and thrillers), "medical" (the old doctor-nurse fantasy, though more often than not it's him-and-her doctors), historical romances, and even paranormal romances.
The most popular sub-genre however remains the "modern" series ( called Harlequin Presents in the USA). These are racy romances that feature very rich and powerful alpha males in exotic and aspiraional settings. Many of these books are set in Australia, as Mills and Boon have a disproportionately large number of authors from Australia, such as Miranda Lee and Emma Darcy, who write a particular type of racy, sexy novel that readers in Britain find exotic and thrilling. The British authors such as Sharon Kendrick, Lynne Graham and Cathy Williams tend to set their stories in the Mediterannean, always with a Latin hero and an English heroine, while the American authors like Heather MacAllister tend to go for American settings with less sexy stories and more humour and tenderness. You do get traditional English novelists like Sara Craven whose heroes are cold aristocratic Englishmen.
Mills and Boon are one of the few publishers left that still allow authors to send in unsolicited manuscripts, and run writing contests from time to time to find new authors to feed their demanding public. If you are someone who fancies writing a 55,000 word novel that sells millions, visit the Mills and Boon blog I Heart Presents first, to see what the editors and published authors are saying (and to participate in the discussions).
Will Mills and Boon still be around in 100 years time? I think so. As life gets tougher and tougher, and modern women have to deal with their own plumbing because their true life male partners are geeks who can't cope, the urge to escape into a fantasy world where stuff is taken care of for you will only get stronger!
