Upon realizing the genre was popular, Richard Bonnycastle finally decided to read a romance novel. They had a "decency code" and rejected more sexually explicit material that Mills & Boon submitted for reprinting. Mary Bonnycastle and her daughter Judy Burgess exercised editorial control over which Mills & Boon novels were reprinted by Harlequin. The two would informally agree to extend their business agreement for an additional year. He would lunch at the Ritz Hotel with Editorial Director Alan Boon, the son of Gerald Mills, co-founder of Mills & Boon. The contract with Mills & Boon was based solely on a handshake, given each year when Bonnycastle visited London. The first Mills & Boon novel to be reprinted by Harlequin was Anne Vinton's The Hospital in Buwambo (Mills & Boon No 407). Mary Bonnycastle enjoyed reading the romances of British publisher Mills & Boon, and, at her urging, in 1957 Harlequin acquired the North American distribution rights to the category romance novels which had been published by Mills & Boon in the Commonwealth of Nations. When the company's chief editor died the following year, Bonnycastle's wife, Mary, took over his duties. In 1953, Harlequin began to publish medical romances.
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Still struggling to survive, soon Doug Weld departed and Richard Bonnycastle, now in full control, transferred Weld's shares to key staff member, Ruth Palmour. įollowing the death of Jack Palmer in the mid-1950s, Richard Bonnycastle acquired his 25% interest in Harlequin. Although the new company had strong sales, profit margins were limited, and the operation struggled to stay solvent. Of the 30,000 copies sold, only 48 were returned. Their biggest success was Jean Plaidy's Beyond the Blue Mountain (1951). Among the novels they reprinted were works by James Hadley Chase, Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Somerset Maugham. For its first few years, the company published a wide range of books, all offered for sale for 25 cents.
The company's first product was Nancy Bruff's novel The Manatee. Palmer oversaw marketing for the new company and Richard Bonnycastle took charge of the production.
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The business was a partnership between Advocate Printers and Doug Weld of Bryant Press, Richard Bonnycastle, plus Jack Palmer, head of the Canadian distributor of the Saturday Evening Post and the Ladies' Home Journal. In May 1949, Harlequin was founded in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada as a paperback reprinting company. In 1971 Harlequin purchased the London-based publisher Mills & Boon Limited and began a global expansion program opening offices in Australia and major European markets such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Netherlands and Scandinavia. It was then purchased by News Corp and is now a division of HarperCollins. Now based in Toronto Canada, Harlequin was owned by the Torstar Corporation, the largest newspaper publisher in Canada, from 1981 to 2014. From the 1960s, using a combination of high-quality editorial content and dynamic marketing, it grew into the largest publisher of romance fiction in the world. Harlequin Enterprises Limited (known simply as Harlequin) is a romance and women's fiction publisher founded in Winnipeg, Canada in 1949.
( July 2015)ġ949 72 years ago ( 1949) in Winnipeg, ManitobaĬarina, Harlequin Teen, HQN, Kimani, Love Inspired, Mira, Hanover Square, Park Row, Graydon House, Gold Eagle (until 2014) Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points.
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