What was the first romance you ever read? It depends on your definition of Romance. I could say “Tarzan of the Apes,” which I read when I was 11, and which could be argued to be a romance—even though Tarzan and Jane don’t get their HEA till the sequel (but they DO get it and their grand love continues thru all 30+ books of the series—and, yes, I’ve read them all). Strictly speaking, however, in today’s Romance Genre, the first ones I read were the original Harlequin sweet romances (started reading them when I was 14 or 15), along with Barbara Cartland, and the old style gothics (by authors such as Victoria Holt, Mary Stewart, etc.), and the old (basically comedy-of-manners style) regencies. From there I progressed to the longer, racier historicals. The first of those I read was the now famous (in romance circles, anyway) “The Flame & the Flower” by Kathleen Woodiwiss. And don’t anybody laugh. Many of the above mentioned types of books are considered silly by modern standards, but they all laid the groundwork for the romance genre as we know it today. They’re our roots, our literary history. I always recommend to aspiring romance writers that they read at least a few of those early books. You can learn a lot about the “spirit” of the genre from them. To effectively see where you’re going, you have to have some idea of where you’ve been.
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February, 2007
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