Quote:
Originally Posted by hildea
Since romance is dominated by women I wanted my third nomination to be a book written by a man.
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I was struck by this since my favorite period for romance novels is the turn of the last century, when standout authors included Anthony Hope, George Barr McCutcheon and Stanley Weyman. So with that in mind, I’ll nominate:
The Red Cockade by Stanley Weyman. A romance set during the French Revolution, it was published in 1895. Obviously free to download.
And among the books I loved when I was a young adolescent were the gothic novels of Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt. I haven’t read any of them since and I wonder what I’d think now. So I’ll nominate one of my favorites:
Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart. It’s set among crumbling French aristocrats and the heroine is an English governess.
And speaking of Anthony Hope, there’s a slight irony in that his greatest novel and one of the greatest romance novels of all time,
The Prisoner of Zelda, also the work on which KJ Charles based her delightful
The Henchmen of Zenda, would not qualify as a romance under the rule she set out!