Almost all her heroines are teenagers or just barely over 18, poor and very innocent. Hers are the predecessors to all those boss-secretary and nurse-doctor romances that accounted for 90% of the Mills & Boon output from the 1950s through the late 1980s.īut Seale takes this tried and true romance formula to places I would never have imagined. Of the ten or so Seale books I’ve read, in all but one, the hero is much older than the heroine, and is usually in some position of authority over the heroine. Most of her books were written and first published in the 1930s-1940s, when the worlds she creates were slightly more possible, and the characters who populate those worlds a bit less disturbing. Though she’s all but forgotten now, Seale was one of Mills & Boon’s earliest superstar authors. If the author is Sara Seale, magical thinking is required.

You need that kind of fairy tale mindset if you’re going to enjoy vintage Mills & Boon/Harlequin romances. Both fairy tales and romance novels exist in a realm of pure magical thinking where suspension of disbelief is the norm, fantastic characters can seem if not ordinary then sympathetic, and situations we’d never accept as possible or even attractive in real life are not only acceptable but somehow believable. There’s a very good reason that so many romance novels are retellings of classic fairy tales.

The 1944 hardcover edition of House of Glass with its beautiful artwork.

Vintage harlequin romance novels