The two main company guidelines for writers (still in use today) are called ‘Lubbock’s Law’ and ‘The Alphaman’. Lubbock’s Law endorses the views of the literary critic Percy Lubbock, who argued that fiction should be written from the heroine’s point of view, in order to promote reader identification and increase interest and suspense. ‘The Alphaman’, according to the Boon brothers, is based upon a ‘law of nature’: the female of any species will always be most intensely attracted to the strongest male of the species, the alpha. Translated in terms of fiction, the hero must be absolutely top-notch and unique. ‘The wimp type doesn’t work. Women don’t want an honest Joe’, Alan Boon said. But while the novels today tend to emphasize the physical characteristics of the hero, in the 1930s and 1940s Mills & Boon men did not have to be rich, famous, or even handsome. (113-114)
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Mills & Boon believed that its readers were gullible, susceptible to suggestions made in the books. As a result, editors carried large responsibilities. ‘We probably haven’t had sufficient credit for our effect on readers at large’, Alan Boon claimed. ‘I’ve often thought if a dictator could edit our lists he could influence our readers’ minds. I don’t say sexually, but if he did it very subtly, saying “Communism is the solution to all our problems” or something like that.’ (114)
I feel a need to note that, despite being a gullible romance reader, I perceive Boon's example to be not at all subtle.
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There's also some discussion of Barbara Cartland, who was not a Mills & Boon author:
Although Cartland and Mills & Boon shared the same literary and moral planes, they differed sharply in their attitude to a changing readership and world. From her first novel, Jig-saw (1923), Cartland has been a moralizer, devoting long sections of narrative to the wicked consequences for a girl if she forsakes her innocence in a cruel world. Her personal crusade against premarital sex has inspired some graphic prose. She lacks the light, even witty, touch with which Mills & Boon authors wove such convictions seamlessly into a story. (120)
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a detectable undercurrent of quasi-feminism runs through most of the novels, and it is arguable that the Mills & Boon heroine of the 1930 and 1940s was more advanced for her time than she is today. (122)
There's some mention of romance in a number of chapters, but see in particular Chapter 5, "‘Take the Place of Valium’: Mills & Boon Ltd." It should be noted, though, that there is a very considerable overlap between its contents and those of the earlier "Scenes from Love and Marriage: Mills and Boon and the Popular Publishing Industry in Britain, 1908-1950."
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I feel a need to note that, despite being a gullible romance reader, I perceive Boon's example to be not at all subtle.
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There's also some discussion of Barbara Cartland, who was not a Mills & Boon author:
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