All kidding aside, the book contains an impressive collection of more than a hundred years of romance-novel cover art, dating from Mills & Boon’s 1908 beginnings through the present.
A studious introduction details the publication’s histories and how romance novels became a type of escapism for generations of women. The pop art inside accentuates that although opportunities and accepted mores for women have changed over the years, many ideals of love and romance have remained the same.
In line with many other types of “for women” entertainment, there are contrasting poses — those of lovey-dovey relationships, such as the sweater-clad couple at an ice rink on the cover of Alison Fraser‘s Time to Go (Mills & Boon, 1990), and those of relatively graphic imagery, like the torn dress about to fall off a gun-wielding brunette on Dale Bogard‘s Pardon my Body (Harlequin, 1951).
Bowring and O’Brien document the intolerances of Western society as well. For instance, Louise Gerard‘s Jungle Love (Mills & Boon, 1924) cover casts a loincloth-wearing warrior in a predatory pose over a distressed, possibly comatose woman on the jungle floor.
Though many would prefer to steer clear of the publishers’ erotica-lite beach reads (not to mention their “family and church” oriented series), The Art of Romance is perfect for the coffee table, and in the right-size prints, many of the images would look perfect on a nearby wall.