Reformed Rakes

What makes something a romance novel? Most readers probably have an intuition of where their definitional lines are, and what are the make or break points, pushing something out of “romance” and into a neighboring genre. Critics and professional organizations of authors and publishers might provide a definition, for analysis or award purposes, to create parameters around what is the in and out group. Today’s episode is less about answering the question “what is a romance novel” and more a historiography of that question. When do we start asking it? How have the answers changed in the long arc of romance history? Who gets to decide what the final, be-all, end-all definition is? Are we ever open to change?
Support us on our Patreon!
Visit our website for transcripts and show notes: reformedrakes.com
Follow us on social media:
Twitter: @reformedrakes
Instagram: @reformedrakes
Bluesky: @reformedrakes
Beth’s Substack
Chels’ Substack
Emma’s Substack
Thank you for listening!

Today we’re discussing Barbara Pym’s second novel, Excellent Women, published in 1952. Pym wrote mid-century comedies of manners and experienced some success in the first decade of her career and then struggled to publish new novels. Excellent Women certainly has a Miss Bates style heroine, but uniquely has a romance-style happy ending, if you agree that the match Mildred Lathbury makes has the potential for happiness. Barbara Pym was not a romance novelist and most of her works focus on a generation of gentlewomen just young enough to feel the loss of a vast number of potential marriage partners from World War II, but old enough (and backwards looking enough) that they aren’t able to parlay new social and gender class mobility into rewarding professions. They, like Miss Bates, exist in, if not a genteel poverty, a genteel bourgeois existence. They may be the daughters of vicars, but have little hope of getting the vicar to marry them. Pym is writing at the same time as authors like Barbara Cartland and Victoria Holt, cited as precedents for a lot of genre romance fiction we read today. And if Jane Austen is another grand precedent of romance fiction, Pym is at least a cousin.
Support us on our Patreon!
Visit our website for transcripts and show notes: reformedrakes.com
Follow us on social media:
Twitter: @reformedrakes
Instagram: @reformedrakes
Bluesky: @reformedrakes
Beth’s Substack
Chels’ Substack
Emma’s Substack
Thank you for listening!

One Burning Heart is the latest book in Elizabeth Kingston’s 13th century medieval series, Welsh Blades, and it is a Reformed Rakes favorite. The book opens on a perfunctory sex scene that could be the stuff of nightmares. Margaret has been married to William for six years, and he's decided to tamper down his ill-concealed loathing for his wife in order to beget an heir. While William married Margaret for strategy, what he doesn’t know is that Margaret also married him for strategy. One Burning Heart is an achingly romantic tale that tackles ancestry, loyalty, and doubt, and Margaret is one of the most compelling historical romance heroines we’ve ever come across.
Support us on our Patreon!
Visit our website for transcripts and show notes: reformedrakes.com
Follow us on social media:
Twitter: @reformedrakes
Instagram: @reformedrakes
Bluesky: @reformedrakes
Beth’s Substack
Chels’ Substack
Emma’s Substack
Thank you for listening!

Just Like Heaven was published in 2011 as the first in the Smyth-Smith quartet and follows a family set in the Bridgerton world. Quinn’s most successful series is the Bridgerton series, even before the adaptation, features a large, tight-knit family that run around Regency London acting anachronistically and telling jokes that we’re told are hilarious and finding true love. A lot of romance time and effort has been spent on the Bridgerton series, book and television show, along with Quinn’s place as an outsized representation of romance to the non-romance world and this is mostly outside what we’re going to be talking about today. All the Rakes have read at least a handful of the Bridgerton series and none of us really enjoy the television show that much, so we wanted to read another one of Quinn’s books as our standalone exploration of her writing style, to try and parse what works or what doesn’t for us, along with what might be the longstanding appeal to readers for a Julia Quinn novel.
Support us on our Patreon!
Visit our website for transcripts and show notes: reformedrakes.com
Follow us on social media:
Twitter: @reformedrakes
Instagram: @reformedrakes
Bluesky: @reformedrakes
Beth’s Substack
Chels’ Substack
Emma’s Substack
Thank you for listening!

We spoke about Mills & Boon last week and now we're onto Harlequin. While we go through the history of Harlequin, we continue with the lens of how gatekeepers influence the romance genre. While writing this script, I was influenced by John Markert’s book Publishing Romance where he argues that gatekeepers often use their own tastes as a barometer for what readers want. Markert argues another driver for gatekeepers is what they perceive market conditions to be. This often results in gatekeepers acting conservatively as they try and find a product that is similar to yet slightly different from what’s on the market. We talk about a few editors again and how they influenced their authors, Vivian Stephens and her time at Harlequin, how heroines having jobs has been editorial policy since the 80s, and how mass market paperbacks will be dramatically scaled down in the upcoming year.
Support us on our Patreon!
Visit our website for transcripts and show notes: reformedrakes.com
Follow us on social media:
Twitter: @reformedrakes
Instagram: @reformedrakes
Bluesky: @reformedrakes
Beth’s Substack
Chels’ Substack
Emma’s Substack
Thank you for listening!