Romance novel

A romance or romantic novel is a genre fiction novel that primarily focuses on the relationship and romantic love between two people, typically with an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending. Authors who have significantly contributed to the development of this genre include Samuel Richardson, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, and Anne Brontë.

Romance novels encompass various subgenres, such as fantasy, contemporary, historical romance, paranormal fiction, sapphic, and science fiction. They also contain tropes like enemies to lovers, second chance, and forced proximity. While women have traditionally been 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 conventionally referred to as "romance novels" existed in ancient Greece. Other precursors can 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 the time Austen lived, 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 in the US. In the UK, the romance genre was long established through the works of prolific author, Georgette Heyer, which contain many tropes and stereotypes, some of which have recently been edited out of some of her novels.

Strong sales of popular romance novels make this the largest segment of the global book market. The genre boomed in the 1980s, with the addition of many different categories of romance and an increased number of single-title romances, but popular authors started pushing the boundaries of both the genre and plot, as well as creating more contemporary characters.^{[citation needed]}

Women will pick up a romance novel knowing what to expect, and this foreknowledge of the reader is very important. When the hero and heroine meet and fall in love, maybe they don't know they're in love but the reader does. Then a conflict will draw them apart, but you know in the end they'll be back together, and preferably married or planning to be by page 192.

— Joan Schulhafer of Pocket Books, 1982