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Denise Robins (1 February 1897 - 1 May 1985) was a prolific British romantic novelist and President of the Romantic Novelists' Association. She wrote under a variety of pen-names, producing short stories, plays, and some two hundred novels. Her books sold over one hundred million copies. Her maiden name was Denise Naomi Klein. Denise Klein, later Robins, was the daughter of Kathleen Clarice Cornwell, who was also a prolific author who wrote under several names, and of her first husband, Herman Klein, who was a professor of music and journalist. Of Russian ancestry, he had been born in Norwich in 1856. Two of the Kleins' children became writers. Adrian Bernard Klein (1892-1969) was an artist and wrote books on photography and cinematography. After serving as an officer in the British Army, he became a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and changed his name to Adrian Cornwell-Clyne. There was a third child, Daryl, born in about 1894.
Kathleen Clarice had been born in Melbourne, Australia, on 11 March 1872 and was the daughter of George Cornwell and his wife Jemima Ridpath, married in 1850. George Cornwell was a railway guard who became a successful gold prospector in Australia, operating several mines. His eldest daughter, Alice Cornwell, born 1852, was spectacularly rich by the 1890s, returning to England and buying the Sunday Times newspaper.
The childhood of Denise, Adrian and Daryl Klein was far from settled. Their parents had married in 1890. Kathleen Klein began an affair with a Worcestershire Regiment officer called Herbert Berkeley Dealtry, who was much younger than her husband and herself, and when Hermann Klein became aware of it he filed a petition for divorce, which was granted in December 1901. Kathleen then married Dealtry.
In 1905, the Dealtrys had some serious troubles in connection with the promotion of dog shows, which they had been drawn into by Kathleen's sister Alice Stennard Robinson, a leading member of the Ladies' Kennel Association (founded 1904) and the National Cat Club. Somehow, the money from the first dog show went missing, and the Dealtrys held a second show to pay the prize money owed on the first. After the second show, prize winners sued Dealtry, which led to his being declared bankrupt.
The family then lived in America for a few years but, by 1908, Kathleen (or 'Kit') Dealtry was back in London, writing Christian novels. In 1918 she married for a third time and wrote at least three books as Mrs Sydney Groom.
When she left school, Denise Klein went to work as a journalist for the D. C. Thomson Press, then became a freelance writer. She began to follow in her mother's footsteps when her first novel was published in 1924. Her serial What is Love? ran in The Star from December 1925 to February 1926. Her first play, Heatwave, written in collaboration with Roland Pertwee, was produced at the St James's Theatre, London, in 1929. As a writer of fiction, Denise Klein wrote under a variety of pen-names, including Denise Chesterton, Francesca Wright, Ashley French, Harriet Gray, Hervey Hamilton and Julia Kane. After marrying Arthur Robins, many of her books were written under her married name.
In studying the history of Mills & Boon, we can trace the evolution of the firm’s greatest achievement and the source of its financial success – the imprint, a recognizable brand name that has given Mills & Boon a distinct advantage in sales.
“At your library you can always ask for “a Mills & Boon novel” in the confidence that you will get an enjoyable story”, the firm assured readers in the 1950s.
But while Mills & Boon did promote its imprint more aggressively than it did individual authors, exceptions abounded, and certain “stars” have often received more attention than others. And they did play an important role. These authors, such as Denise Robins in the 1930s, Lilian Warren (“Rosalind Brett”) in the 1950s, and Violet Winspear in the 1960s, set new standards for the Mills & Boon novel, and in their success inspired – and elevated – the rest of the “team” of writers.
“Authors really take in each other’s washing, if you like, and learn by reading each other’s books,” Alan Boon said. “This would help to lift them higher in the Mills & Boon operation.”
Early on its life, Mills & Boon was aiming at the circulations libraries, a market which would become the firm’s lifeblood. In the 1922 catalogue, “Mills & Boon’s Special 3/6 net Novels With Jackets” were billed as “especially suited to Circulating Libraries”. A full-page ad in the February 1927 National Newsagent boldly proclaimed, “Selling in Tens of Thousands! But you know how they sell! Large Size, Picture Wrappers.”
These picture wrappers were emerging as a major selling point, and, increasingly, books were sold by their covers, with advertisements featuring reproductions of dust jackets. Denise Robins’s Women Who Seek portrayed a glamorous flapper checking her make-up.
If Mills & Boon’s general fiction list was unpredictable and inconsistent in the 1920s, one genre was thriving: romantic fiction.
“At this time we didn’t see a specifically romance market,” Alan Boon noted. “In the lists in the back of some of the books, we have Jack London’s The Iron Heel being advertised alongside one of Denise Robins’s novels. It was ridiculous. It gradually happened.”
The authors who stand out in the 1920s lists of Mills & Boon were all writing what has been classified as “romantic” fiction: Joan Sutherland, Louise Gerard, Elizabeth Carfrae, and Denise Robins. These authors were “pushed” often and the publicity surrounding them was never modest. This strategy demonstrates that Charles Boon recognized the emerging market, and the money to be earned by large sales of cheaper, half-crown (2s. 6d.) editions.
No doubt inspired by the success of Louise Gerard and Joan Sutherland, Mills & Boon promoted grandly two other authors of romantic fiction in the 1920s: Elizabeth Carfrae and Denise Robins. Both were prolific writers, and their sales would serve to consolidate the Mills & Boon romantic fiction list begun by Sutherland and Gerard.
Unlike Carfrae, Denise Robins was an established author and a big seller, having published novels for ten years before meeting Charles Boon in 1927. In her autobiography, Stranger than Fiction, Robins recalled that first meeting:
“I remember old Charles Boon, my publisher, visiting me in Sussex one Sunday. I opened a cupboard in my study to show him a pile of manuscripts. He gave them one glance, then said: “I’ll give you a good cheque now this moment for the rights of the whole lot.” (He mentioned a tempting sum.) But my business sense had developed with the years and I laughingly refused his offer.
“You are right, you know!” said Charles with a twinkle.
I was. I’ve since made a lot more money with those stories than he offered then.”
Robins was represented by Curtis Brown. Her first contract with Mills & Boon in 1927 contained terms similar to Carfrae’s: three novels, for which she received a £30 advance, and 10 per cent terms. Once Robins’s novels started selling, however, her terms improved dramatically. The next two contracts, covering six novels, earned advances to £100, with terms rising to 12.5 per cent.
Women Who Seek (1928), Robins’s second novel for Mills & Boon, is typical of her provocative style which was in the vein of Gerard and Dell. Eve Walton-Evans, “a young, beautiful girl of ultra-modern type”, is raised by old-fashioned parents. She marries Dr Michael Graham, who is decent but dull. Eve lusts for Michael’s new partner, Dr Nicholas Rayne, and the feeling is mutual. Robins presents Eve as the “eternal Eve” who is irresistible to men:
A man might look long at Eve’s mouth and lose his strength of will. It was a fascinating mouth, rather large but perfectly shaped, the lower lip full, the upper lip attractively short. An impulsive, passionate young mouth. Certainly the child had depths in her – and very passionate depths, too.
Although Eve “was by no means a woman of the world yet. She was very young and inexperienced”, she is desperately in love with Nick, whose kisses provoke “all that was primitive and fierce in her”. Eve pleads with Nick for “one hour of real love”. He demurs: “It’s a sin, Eve. You’re not the sort of woman to do wrong and be callous about it. You’d regret it, terribly.” But Eve disagrees, and amid a violent thunderstorm, they make love:
The consulting room was plunged in shadow: In the dim light he saw Eve, arms stretched out above her head, ecstatic young face tilted back, eyes shut. He thought she was like some pagan priestess, offering herself to the gods. He walked back to her and took her in his arms.
Afterwards, Eve has tinges of guilt about her adultery but no real regrets: “it was a frightful problem. She was one of thousands of married women in similar circumstances.” She and Nick regretfully agree to part, for kindly Michael’s sake. But when Nick contracts “general blood poisoning” and dies, Eve confesses all. Michael forgives her, even blames himself for her infidelity, since he was not a good enough husband. She pledges to try to reform herself, as her “seeking” has only lead to disaster.
In her nine years and thirty-three novels with Mills & Boon, Robins dominated the publication list and was the firm’s top fiction seller. Her success, at the end of a difficult decade, must have been heartening to Gerald Mills and Charles Boon. By 1929 Mills & Boon already had ten Robins novels in print.
It’s interesting to see how Robins and Carfrae were used by Mills & Boon to establish its two popular fiction lists: first edition and cheaper editions. New titles by these authors were sometime offered at full price (7s. 6d.), but sometimes at the cheaper price (2s. 6d.), to bolster the low end of the market. The firm’s strategy was shared with readers and booksellers in a 1928 advertisement, entitled, “Mills & Boon’s Popular 2/6 Novels”:
(The 2/8 Novels) are selling in tens of thousands, but booksellers know how they sell. Last year Mills & Boon introduced Elizabeth Carfrae’s Novels to Half-Crown readers, and they have sold in thousands, and are selling better every day. This year Mills & Boon introduce the novels of Denise Robins in this extraordinary successful Library, and the first three volumes will be The Inevitable End, The Passionate Flame and White Jade, to be followed by other during the Autumn. The Inevitable End has enjoyed remarkable success in 7/6 form, and is certain to appeal to tens of thousands of readers in Half-Crown form. The Passionate Flame and White Jade are entirely new long novels – never before published – and issued in the first place at 2/6 net. Mills & Boon are confident that the Denise Robins Novels will repeat the remarkable successes of the other novelists in this superb series, such as Louise Gerard, Joan Sutherland, Elizabeth Carfrae, Sinclair Gluck, Victor Bridges, etc, etc.
In the Menzies List for April 1929, a large ad entitled “A Mills & Boon Page” advertised “The Elizabeth Carfrae Novels” (6, including the latest, Guarded Heights), and “The Denise Robins Novels” (9, including the latest, Heavy Clay). Seemingly on the strength of these two women alone, Mills & Boon was restored to prosperity by the end of the 1920s.
Since the First World War Mills & Boon's publication lists had become increasingly dominated by fiction, especially by women authors, and usually of a "popular" vein, namely romance and adventure novels. By 1929 the firm's best-selling authors were all writing romantic fiction: Denise Robins, Elizabeth Carfrae, Louise Gerard, and Sophie Cole.
It’s difficult to speak of a specific Mills & Boon editorial policy before the Second World War. The reason is obvious: Charles Boon, although restructuring his firm to become a “library house” in the 1930s, was still a general publisher at heart. The 1930s was still a time of experimentation, and novels were novels in their own right. Boon did not impose many restrictions on his authors and, to a large extent, relied on the authors for guidance on current tastes and attitudes. These authors were, increasingly, young women, who brought to their writing a fresh (and up-to-date) point of view. If a book or style sold well, it was copied. Denise Robins, Elizabeth Carfrae, and (to a lesser degree) Louise Gerard were all influential, as were the cinema, the wireless, and popular best-sellers such as Rebecca and Gone with the Wind.
According to Alan Boon, the special attraction which Mills & Boon novels held for women during this period was their “wholesomeness”, a quality which his father promoted. This is not to imply that the novels never took risks. Rather, they were not explicit, not what one would class as “immoral”. They were “romantic” in the way they dealt with relationships, and they always ended happily.
“Father was very careful about the moral line, about the boundaries you could not cross,” Boon said. “But he was not very hesitant of sex. In a curious way, the novels were more permissive in a sense than today.”
These so-called “sexy” books were written by Louise Gerard, Denise Robins, and Elizabeth Carfrae.
During this decade the characteristics of the archetypal Mills & Boon heroine and hero began to fall into place. The heroine is a virgin, aged 18-20, somewhat clever, and almost always an orphan, which lent sympathy (and freed the woman from family obligations). The hero is significantly older, aged 30-40, enigmatic, and rough-edged. He is often the heroine’s employer. The setting could be an English office or factory, or a foreign country. There is always a happy ending. The couple marry or, if already husband and wife, settle their differences and make a better start.
Beauty in the heroine was optional, perhaps to enhance reader identification. She could be plain, or a stunner, and authors were often precise in their descriptions. In Denise Robins’s Sweet Love (1934), Tanya, an exotic dancer in Cairo, possesses “a face of maddening beauty, ivory pale with wide-set eyes of velvet brown under curving jet-black lashes. She had a wide scarlet mouth with a short upper lip, exquisite hands and small, arched feet with pink, polished nails.”
From the first spark between hero and heroine came the so-called “punishing kiss”, the first passionate kiss that readers anxiously awaited. Denise Robins was the recognized mistress of the punishing kiss device. In The Boundary Line (1932), for example, Dr Blaise Farlong kisses his 21 years old bride-to-be, Terry:
He lost his head for an instant, and bent to the generous red mouth she lifted to his, and kissed her. It was not the light caress he had intended. Her young, slender arms curved about his neck, and her eyelids closed in rapt surrender. The kiss was long and deep and infinitely satisfying to them both. It seemed to Blaise Farlong that there must, after all, be such a thing in life as recompense. He had tasted the dregs of bitterness, of suffering, and now this amazing and unexpected cup of rapture was lifted to his lips by this girl… She, body, soul, and brain on fire for him, thought: “Now I know that I love him – terribly. Now I know what it is to be in love.”
This description clearly has cinematic qualities. Kissing between married hero and heroine could be more dramatic, even more passionate. In Life for Two, Dall literally sweeps Claire off her feet in a fit of passion:
She made a little involuntary movement towards him, and then, without word or sign of any kind, he had stepped forward and taken her into his arms, covering her hair and her eyes with eager, passionate kisses, bending her head back until his lips reached her mouth and clung there in one long, time-effacing kiss…
She lay back in the circle of his arms, letting the sweetness of his caresses sink down into her heart, heedless of time or place, knowing only that she was here in the arms of the one man who would ever matter to her out of all the world. She gave him back kiss for kiss, infusing into her own all pent-up love and longing of her young life.
In novels at this time “lovemaking” referred almost exclusively to kissing of this nature. Pre- and extra-marital affairs were naturally discouraged and, if attempted, brought wicked consequences to the hero and heroine. Mills & Boon authors (and, indirectly, Charles Boon) appear to have been issuing life lessons all the time to potential readers.
What we would call today “marital rape” was quite common in Mills & Boon novels at this time. So long as the hero and heroine were married – even if in name only – strong, violent bedroom scenes were allowed to enhance the passion. Denise Robins often used this tactic in her enormously popular romances. In Sweet Love, for example, Tanya, the exotic dancer in Cairo, marries upright engineer Gordon. But they separate, and Tanya is tricked into a bogus marriage with the rogue Victor. Gordon is furious, abducts his wife, and repeatedly rapes her:
”You’re worse than any Eastern slave-driver!” she flung at him fiercely. “You forget you’re living in the year 1933 and that I’m English, and so are you. You can’t go on forcing me to live with you – lock me up – I…”
“You shall stay with me – for just as long as I want you, Tanya,” he repeated against her ear. “You call me a slave-driver. Ah, well, my Tanya, out here, do you know what the Arabs do with a faithless wife? They strangle her – so…”
His brown, supple fingers closed over her throat. Tanya gave a chocked cry:
“Gordon – Gordon – for God’s sake…”
“I’m not going to strangle you, my dear,” he laughed. “But I am going to show my little “slave” that she is mine – and that ten thousand dagos can’t take her from me.”
“Gordon…” She was crying bitterly now. “Please…”
He bent his splendid head and kissed her shoulders, slipping the narrow silk strap down her arm. Picking up an Eastern shawl of fine, thin texture, he wrapped her in it, then laid her against the pillows, pinioned her with one strong arm, and laughed down at her.
After running away, Tanya finds herself (rather like Scarlett in Gone with the Wind) pregnant with Gordon’s child. Before the novel ends, a baby girl, Mary Tanya, is born, and Tanya and Gordon are reunited, with Gordon noting, “Mary Tanya was, thank God, born in wedlock.”
In The Boundary Line, Denise Robins also tackled the horror and shame of divorce in a fantastic story of seduction and betrayal. Terry Manstone, 21, longs for the simple life, away from her society mother and fancy home in Wimbledon. Addicted to the new “hiking” fad, she sets off alone on a trek across the Sussex downs. In a violent storm, Terry twists her ankle, and seeks shelter in a country cottage, where the housekeeper reluctantly lets her spend the night. Asleep in the hero’s bed, she is awakened by him, Dr Blaise Farlong. Blaise is unhappily married, and his wicked wife, Ruth, wants a divorce. Ruth concocts a story that Blaise and Terry have spent the night together (thereby charging adultery). Terry is named as co-respondent in the divorce case, which brands her a “bad woman”, while destroying Blaise’s practice. Though the accusation is false, Terry’s mother throws her out, and Terry moves in with Blaise. Blaise contemplates suicide; he’s about to inject morphine when Terry saves him. Blaise’s lawyer suggests Terry see several doctors to prove she did not sleep with Blaise and is still a virgin; Terry responds, “It makes me feel absolutely beastly and cheap.” But love blossoms, and they admittedly “live in sin” until the divorce is granted. The day after the divorce, Blaise and Terry marry, and spend a busy wedding night: “The passionate fulfilment, the beauty of those hours, had given Terry a fuller and sweeter understanding of life. The laughing child had become a woman who laughed for love in the arms of her lover.”
Pointedly, the couple does not live happily ever after. They lead a nomadic existence, settling in a town until rumours force them to move on. Blaise’s divorce and Terry’s involvement cripple his practice; they are broke.
“It doesn’t matter how decent we are – or how much we love each other – or how far circumstances are against us,” Blaise laments. “Nothing will be taken into consideration. We shall be boycotted.”
But, as this is a romantic novel, the truth of Terry’s innocence is published; she is reconciled to her mother; and one of Blaise’s patients dies, leaving him a legacy of £20.000, which arrives in time for the birth of a son. Seemingly all of the suffering and hardship paid off in the end.
Clearly, the romantic novels which Charles Boon published in the 1930s were free from the editorial restrictions which would dominate the decades after the Second World War. At this time, Boon’s experimentation with styles gave authors a certain autonomy. If Joan Sutherland and Louise Gerard were masters of romance and passion in the 1910s and 1920s, it was Denise Robins who took it to the next level, combining high romance with an intricate, fast-moving plot that inspired other Mills & Boon authors. One of her most popular novels, Sweet Love, covered all the vices – rape, bigamy, suicide, illegitimacy, divorce, stabbings, poisoning, and more violence – in setting up the premise that mother love is the fiercest and greatest of all. Tanya and her husband Gordon endure endless hardships but are reunited, with child, in the end, cleansing all evil.
Sales of the Mills & Boon Half-Crown Library soared, from 162.266 in 1929 to a high of 499.662 in 1935. This library, which contained “all-new” and reprinted titles by Robins, Carfrae, and others, was pitched especially to the smaller commercial libraries. Although the profit margin on these titles was lower than for first editions, the volume sold would have translated into good cash flow for the firm. Moreover, at the same time, Mills & Boon was increasing the number of new titles published each month. The publication list for January-June 1938, for example, contained 47 new novels (by 36 authors) and 37 reprints: a total of 84 publications, or 14 per month – and all of them romances.
With the expansion of circulating libraries, sales of Mills & Boon novels were prodigious. On average, in the 1930s between 6.000 and 8.000 copies of each title were printed. Of these, as many as 3.000 would be kept and sold later as a cheap edition. Each of the library chains had standing orders. Boots purchased between 300 and 500 copies of each title, and Argosy & Sundial Libraries, up to 700 copies. Public libraries, if they ordered at all (prejudice against spending public money on “trash” books was common), took 150 copies. By the middle of the 1930s, Mills & Boon promised to issue two to four new books every fortnight. The numbers Mills & Boon dangled before the public in newspaper advertisements were impressive. In February 1935 Denise Robins, with 35 novels to her credit, had sold 506.000 copies, an average of 14.500 copies per title. A distant second was Elizabeth Carfrae (264.000; 17 titles), followed by Helena Grose (133.000; 13 titles), Deirdre O’Brien (108.000; 14 titles), and Marjorie M. Price (86.000; 10 titles).
In 1935 the Bookseller analysed the stock of “one of the largest and newest” of the commercial libraries in a quest to reveal “What the Public Likes”. Among the Mills & Boon authors listed in “the best-seller class” (alongside Edgar Wallace) were Denise Robins, Joan Sutherland, Sophie Cole, Louise Gerard, Elizabeth Carfrae, Deirdre O’Brien, and Marjorie M. Price.
Behind the promotion and aggressive growth which surrounded Mills & Boon new authors lay an important strategy. Charles Boon was determined to build up a large list – and backlist – of titles to weather any publishing crisis. Never again would his firm become so dependant on the fortunes of a single author, such as Jack London. This policy was justified in 1935 when the firm lost its star author: Denise Robins. Robins was at the top of her form, a major seller with thirty-four titles in print, and a one-woman publicity engine, akin her future rival, Barbara Cartland. In August 1933, for example, Mills & Boon trumpeted in an advertisement in the Sunday Times, “All England is reading Denise Robins’ lovely story Shatter The Sky. Fourth Edition Printing.” The critic James Agate wrote in the Daily Express, “Half the world does not know how the other half lives. Still less does it know what it reads. Miss Robins’ sales in this country approach 500.000 copies.”
Not only was Robins the most prolific author on the Mills & Boon list, but she had the most lucrative contracts in the firm’s history. In 1932 an eight-book contract, covering publications from July 1933 (Shatter the Sky) until June 1935 (her last Mills & Boon novel, How Great the Price), paid Robins £100 each month up to £2.400, or £300 for each title. Her agent, Curtis Brown, presumably took a percentage. But this was not sufficient. As so often happened to Mills & Boon in its early days, Robins was poached by a new publishing house, Nicholson & Watson. In her autobiography Robins told her side of the story:
“For eight or nine years now, Mills & Boon had been my publishers. Suddenly a young man named Ivor Nicholson came along - a clever, charming journalist who, with the wealth of Bernard Watson to back his new venture, launched a new publishing house - Ivor Nicholson & Watson. They wanted my name on their list. They tempted me with what was the biggest offer I had ever received from any literary quarter. A cheque for one thousand pounds, free, gratis, and for which I need do no work. It was merely for signing the contract!
I did not go behind Charles Boon's back. I told him the facts. Unfortunately he was so annoyed by this offer from Ivor Nicholson that he refused to compete and at once released me from my contract with his firm. Somewhat reluctantly I left my old publishers and became the new Nicholson & Watson 'star' author.”
“Denise Robins, one of our greatest authors, knew she could sell on her name more than other authors could,” explained Alan Boon. “She was a superstar, and she knew it. Our problem was to find a way to satisfy the superstar. What could Mills & Boon offer a superstar? Superstars weren't grateful. We went on publishing all the authors all the same.”
John Boon elaborated on his father’s annoyance, saving he “exploded” when Robins made her announcement, shouting, “Go on, get out – take your money.” Ironically, in 1997 Mills & Boon contracted with the Denise Robins estate to publish some of her titles in India, where she remains very popular.
Robins’s first book with Nicholson & Watson, Life and Love(1935), was launched with an unprecedented publicity campaign, which featured the slogan “Robins for Romance” emblazoned on London buses. Significantly, one of her first duties for her new publisher was a personal appearance in Liverpool to open a commercial lending library, no doubt thanking the public which had made her fortune. Mills & Boon made no public comment on Robins’s defection, but capitalized on her fame.
In March 1935, in the Sunday Times, under the dramatic headline “25.546”, and advertisement ran, “Mills & Boon have sold since January 1 (8 weeks) the above number of the Denise Robins Novels and they are confident that Fiction readers will read with alacrity All This For Love 7s. 6d. net which will be published on March 22. It is the finest novel Denise Robins has yet written.”
Significantly, Robins was the last “big” Mills & Boon author to leave the firm. There are many reasons why. For one, the list was expanded and broadened with many quality authors, which bolstered the imprint and lessened the dependence on a single star of the Robins mould. Also, concerted effort was made to nurture authors, and sign them to lucrative multi-book contracts. Mills & Boon’s future prosperity, therefore, was achieved through quantity as much as “quality”. Eventually the Mills & Boon imprint became better known than the authors themselves, which offered a distinct advantage in promotion and sales.
In 1938 Ronald F. Batty, author of How to Run a Twopenny Library (whose publications attests to the popularity and financial rewards offered by commercial libraries), listed "The Most Popular Twopenny Library Authors". Under the category "Love and Romance", sixty-eight authors were listed. Of these, eight were Mills & Boon regulars, including Elizabeth Carfrae, Sophie Cole, Louise Gerard, Helena Grose, Marjorie M. Price, and Marjorie Warby. Denise Robins and Joan Sutherland also made the list, as did Ruby M. Ayres, Maysie Greig, Baroness Orczy, Ethel M. Dell, and Rafael Sabatini.
Mills & Boon’s novels, some 10 or more years old, circulated widely during the war and were read by men as well as women. One “fan letter”, from a soldier in Greece in 1943, concerned an old Denise Robins title.
“Sirs, I have read your published book Sweet Love by Denise Robins. I think that the author is a stupid over romantic twat. From a soldier in Greece. 1934 edition. P.S. Sincerely hope that Robins is dead & buried.”
The Second World War strengthened Mills & Boon pre-eminent position as a library supplier. In 1948 Boots Booklovers Library (perhaps Mills & Boon’s biggest customer) instructed its librarians about “Light romances and Family Stories” in one of its Literary Courses for employees.
“Most women find so much to do these days and are entitles, if they wish, to spend an hour enjoying a book which provides them with a chance to sit down and relax, both physically and mentally”, Boots noted of these readers of light fiction.
Boots further advised its librarians to “be familiar with the names of these authors, so that when the books are rebound we can find them easily”. In Boot’s supplied list of 81 popular authors of romantic fiction, 40 were published by Mills & Boon, from Jane Arbor and Mary Burchell to Sara Seale and Jan Tempest. Among those on the list who were not published by Mills & Boon were Ruby M. Ayers, Barbara Cartland, Charles Herbert, and Denise Robins.
Joseph McAleer has described Robins as "the recognized mistress of the punishing kiss device."
During her long career as a writer, from about 1917 until her death in 1985, Robins certainly wrote more than one hundred and sixty books. She was dubbed by the Daily Graphic "the queen of romantic fiction".
She was elected as President of the Romantic Novelists' Association in 1961.
In 1965, Robins published her autobiography, Stranger than Fiction, summarized thus:
"Apart from writing nearly two hundred novels that have brought her millions of fans throughout the world, Denise Robins led a remarkable life. Her unhappy childhood did not sour her belief in love. Here is her own story."
At the time of her death in 1985, Robins's books had been translated into fifteen languages and had sold more than one hundred million copies. In 1984, they were borrowed more than one and a half million times from British libraries. Among her best-selling works were House of the Seventh Cross, Khamsin and Dark Corridor.
Denise Naomi Klein married firstly Arthur Robins, a corn broker on the Baltic Exchange. This marriage ended in divorce, after Robins met her second husband, O'Neill Pearson, in Egypt. However, like Agatha Christie, Robins continued to publish most of her books under her first married name.
Robins was the mother of three daughters, Patricia, who as Claire Lorrimer became another best-selling author, Anne, and Eve.
First Book – Love's Broken Idol (1918) as Denise Chesterton
Last Book - Illusion of Love (2000)
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denise_Robins
Source: Passion's Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon
Cover Art by J.C.B. Knight, 1936
Cover Art by Rosemary Hird
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Just last month I was stuck in a jammed elevator and rogue was I tickled pink to have my trusty LED flashlight with me so I didn't feel so scared. As you can comprehend from the pictures, the LED flashlight produces a moderately convincing lambaste, to bearing in mind explain up the area when you most for it.