How did the modern romance novel evolve?

Kind of an odd question, I know, but I’ve been reading this thing all week. It was written to be trashy and over-the-top, but I got to talk to the author this weekend, and she claims she and her friend were imitating the style of the ones that were most popular at the time.

So I got to wondering - how did all this come about? What’s the story behind a multimillion-dollars-a-year industry that’s built completely on mostly recycled and slightly varying novels? Ones that have become so repeated and cliched that they’re ridiculously easy to make fun of?

Actually they havent really evolved but just became more explicit in the last century or so

Most of the numbered romance books are or was basically the female version of the dime novels

and to be honest every gener has fallen to the point of cliche and parody

But when romance poems started in the mid to late middle ages they were about age that never happened and today would be called historicial fiction since they made the time seem more galmourous that it was

Actually some call ther king arthur story the biggest historical romance of them all

and besides you missed out on the big interavctive to a point romance novels …

There called soap operas :slight_smile: