Romance novel

Romance, or romance fiction (most famously in the form of a romance novel), is the genre of narrative fiction whose works focus on the romantic love and budding relationship between two or more characters, often concluding with an emotionally satisfying or optimistic ending. As a type of conventional genre fiction, its early major pioneering authors writing in Modern English include: Samuel Richardson, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, and Anne Brontë. Romance novels can encompass various subgenres, such as bodice ripper, fantasy, contemporary, historical romance, paranormal fiction, sapphic, and science fiction. They may also contain tropes such as enemies to lovers, second chance, and forced proximity. While women have traditionally been considered the primary readers of romance novels, a 2017 study commissioned by the Romance Writers of America found that men accounted for 18% of romance book buyers. The genre of works retroactively referred to as "romance novels" existed as far back as Greece in the Roman era. Precursors can also be found in the literary fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries, including Samuel Richardson's sentimental novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) and the novels of Jane Austen. Austen inspired Georgette Heyer, the British author of historical romance set around Austen's lifetime, as well as detective fiction. Heyer's first romance novel, The Black Moth (1921), was set in 1751. The British company Mills & Boon began releasing romance novels for women in the 1930s. Their books were sold in North America by Harlequin Enterprises Ltd, which began direct marketing to readers and allowing mass-market merchandisers to carry the books. An early American example of a mass-market romance was Kathleen E. Woodiwiss' The Flame and the Flower (1972), published by Avon Books. This was the first single-title romance novel to be published as an original paperback...