In 2010 Dr Jodi McAlister was working a nine-to-five office job, hoping to save enough money to return to university to complete a PhD. Having studied “Shakespeare and friends” as a literary student, she assumed her focus would be along those lines. But her day job, she says, was sapping her happiness. So every lunchtime she would head to the nearest Big W, clearing out the romance section in a bid to escape to a happier world.
“When I was a ‘tweenager’ – say 10, 11, 12 years old – I used to steal my grandma’s Mills & Boon novels. Now, I was miserable and these books were making me happier,” she recalls of what led her to rediscover her love of the genre. “So I thought, ‘What if I study these? Is that actually allowed?’”
Turns out yes, it was. And not only did she complete her PhD, but today Jodi is the Vice President for the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance (IASPR), the peak body for romance scholars internationally. And if you think that sounds niche, you’d be surprised, because the world of romance novels is big business.
On TikTok, romance books are going viral – hitting the top of bestseller lists years after release – thanks to influencers spruiking their favourites to an increasingly eager audience.
And Mills & Boon, whose romances were once seen as a guilty pleasure, many women admitting to wrapping fake covers around their novels to hide their reading choices, sells a book every two seconds around the world.
“Romance has been a perennially popular genre,” says Jodi. “But there’s no escaping the way that, during the COVID pandemic, it became visible in a way it hadn’t been for some time.”
What is Mills and Boon?
Visibility of the genre wasn’t something Gerald Mills and Charles Boon were concerned with when they launched the publishing house back in 1908. Instead, Mills & Boon was a jack-of-all-trades, doing everything from educational tomes to craft books to reprints of the entire works of various British bestsellers. In between they published the occasional romance novel – 1909’s Arrows From The Dark by Sophie Cole was their first.
“It wasn’t until around the 1930s that they became the ‘go-to’ publisher for romance,” says Jodi.
Charles Boon and his family (Gerald Mills would pass away in 1928) had noticed that during World War I and the following Great Depression, sales of romance spiked. Readers wanted the promise of a happy ending when the world was so dark, and Mills & Boon could deliver that in spades. Not only that, but they could also do it at a price most people could afford.
Circulation in libraries became their stock in trade. This is where most women headed before devouring their romance novels at home, lost in a world where love conquers all. On average, between 6000 and 8000 copies of each of the stories were printed, a huge number for that time.
“There was a lot of stuff about escape,” says Jodi of the content in that period. “A lot of people heading off to glamorous, non-British locations. Heroines marrying the wrong man and then escaping from that marriage. A lot of heroines being seduced by bad men and eventually finding these very nice, non-threatening men to marry.”
Marketing proved key. Their covers were bright and flashy, and the company produced catalogues to show all available releases under genres rather than try to sell just a single release. Advertisements declared things like: “I always look for a Mills & Boon when I want a pleasant book. Your troubles are at an end when you chose a Mills & Boon novel.”
“There was one author named Denise Robins in that period,” says Jodi, “who was super popular. Buses would drive around London with things like ‘Robins for Romance!’ on the side.”
Then another world war broke out. Paper rationing was a problem for many book publishers – not so for Mills & Boon. They successfully argued to the government that they should maintain their paper rations because the books were good for morale for the women working in the factories.
“It was the only publisher which maintained its paper rationing on those grounds,” says Jodi. “The war was hardly ever mentioned in these books at all. They were really functioning as an escape.”
And it wasn’t just in the UK that women were finding pleasure in these tomes. In Australia – as well as many other parts of the Commonwealth – Mills & Boon had an eager audience. They’d even enlisted a few Aussie authors whose local inspiration produced books which spoke to an international readership.
“The first ever Australian romance Mills & Boon published was called Australian Hospital by Joyce Dingwell, in 1956,” Jodi recalls. “Alan Boon [son of Charles] was the editor at that time and he actually sent a copy to the Australian High Commissioner in London saying, ‘I think this book would be good propaganda for immigration and tourism to Australia’.”
The 1950s had seen a focus on rebuilding the nation postwar. The 1960s saw a shift into more of what Jodi dubs “the sexy stuff”, with heroines surrendering to temptation. And in this time period Mills & Boon had expanded again, using magazines across the globe – including The Australian Women’s Weekly – to serialise their novels, gaining new and eager audiences.
When did Mills and Boon start in Australia?
They pivoted from the library method, beginning to publish in paperback before becoming available in libraries. And while the material was predominantly British, by now the writing was on the wall: It was time for the publisher to expand internationally.
Canada went first in the late 1950s. And when the Boon family decided to sell in 1971, it was to Harlequin Enterprises in Canada which went on to take the company to even greater heights. Having made a huge success in the US, they then turned their attention to popular export markets. Mills & Boon Australia was established in 1974.
When the Australian office launched, “Alpha heroes” were prevalent in the books of this time, says Jodi. “There was this romance of, ‘I will sweep you off your feet and take care of everything’. Power dynamics reinforced this in a way around employment – the man is always the doctor and the woman the nurse. There was the boss/secretary romance.”
With women now the majority of those penning these books, plenty of debate over whether the genre embraced feminism or not began to stir. Germaine Greer would opine that romances were written by women cherishing the chains of their bondage. Others would argue that romance would help readers work through power dynamics – that many plots would not just see the heroine find a man who loved her, but one who respected her.
As more Australian authors began to write for the franchise, friendship – a variation on the “mateship” we pride ourselves upon – certainly came to the fore. Rural romance fuelled the exports and “it wasn’t like, here is the little woman at home where the man works the land,” says Jodi. “They were a team who did it together and became a real companion unit.”
How to write for Mills and Boon
Marion Lennox was among those devouring these romances as the company went from strength to strength into the 1980s. A country kid, she spent two hours each way on the school bus, and was “an avid reader and dreamer”, she tells The Weekly.
Marion was working as a teacher when she went on maternity leave. When she scoffed to a fellow new mum that writing a Mills & Boon novel would be easy, they told her to put her money where her mouth was.
“I had the choice of wiping the playdough from the kitchen floor or sitting down and starting to write a book,” says the author, who has gone on to write over 130 Mills & Boon books. Two years later it was published.
“A Mills & Boon in the 1950s used to be a heroine waiting for her white knight hero, ready to transform her into somebody of worth. That has changed very dramatically. Now, my heroine has to absolutely be somebody of her own worth who is dealing very nicely on her own. A great romantic story will not transform her life. It will actually give a happy ending on both sides and change both perspectives.”
When Marion’s books were first being published in the ’90s, Clare Connelly was another author-in-the-making who was reading them.
“I grew up in a small town in Queensland where there wasn’t a lot to do,” she says. “I used to walk to our local op shop and fossick for books to find my own entertainment. I found this stash of Mills & Boons – they were 10 cents each – and I would take an armful home to read. Then I’d take that armload back and get another one every weekend. They became wonderful pockets of escapist fun.”
Clare submitted her first novel to the publisher when she was just 15. “I actually have that rejection letter framed,” she laughs. “It was terrible, but I kept writing. I self-published my first novel when I was 31.”
Two years after that first release, Clare pitched to Mills & Boon at a Romance Writers of Australia conference – today she has written over 40 books for the publisher and hopes to continue.
“Mills & Boon is quite hard to write for,” she says, countering those who think that the books are light fluff or an unintelligent read. “There’s a misconception that anyone can trot one out. But it’s very hard to write an emotionally powerful story in 50,000 words.”
Marion herself had attended the inaugural Romance Writers of Australia conference back in the mid-1990s. It was at Macquarie University in Sydney, she recalls, “and we had maybe about 20 authors meeting for the first time. It was people coming out of the woodwork.”
Today, hundreds of novelists and speakers attend the event to celebrate their passion for the genre and share their own insights.
“The world is hungry for romance,” says Marion. “If you want to write any kind of novel, if you throw in a bit of romance all of a sudden your audience completely expands. And I think people are starting to realise that.”
“Love is a universal experience,” adds Clare. “To me, it’s such a compelling emotion. And the other thing where romance varies from a lot of other genres is that a happy ending is always guaranteed in a romance novel. It doesn’t matter how twisty, turning and angsty the plot gets – at the end of it you’re going to get the payoff of a lovely, happy ending. And that’s such a nice, secure feeling.”
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
