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eBook Category: General Nonfiction/History
eBook Description: Imagine a time when a romance novel won the Pulitzer Prize. When one romance writer was the highest paid author in the world. When romance was enjoyed by both men and women. A Golden Age of Romance Fiction! It did exist, and you'll learn all about it in this book.

eBook Publisher: Vintage Romance Publishing, Published: 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: January 2007

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [147 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [186 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [107 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [489 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [110 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [212 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [169 KB] , hiebook (KML) [313 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [193 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [100 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [197 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [168 KB]
Words: 30682
Reading time: 87-122 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Just Imagine...

Here's a dream for you.

Suppose there was a time when romance fiction was taken seriously? An age when romantic authors were highly regarded, their books admired and respected; a time when romance was not derided as "fluff' or "soft-core porn" or whatever claptrap the ignorant use to stigmatize what they don't understand.

Imagine ... just imagine ... long ago and far away ... there was once a time when a romance book won the Pulitzer Prize...

Guess what? This is no dream. There really was such a time--and there was such a book!

The age was the 1930s. The book was Gone With the Wind.

The author, like a number of romance writers of that time, had a background in journalism. As a reporter for the Atlantic Journal in the 1920s, plucky young Margaret "Peggy" Mitchell would do anything to get a scoop. Once she even crawled through a hotel window to get an interview with romantic film star Rudolph Valentino.

Mitchell's vigorous lifestyle defies the phony stereotype of romance novelists so many people hold today. She was no shy housewife who sat at home and lived out her fantasies on a typewriter. A spirited "flapper," she became notorious in Atlanta for performing a scandalous "Apache" dance at a 1921 charity ball. Married in 1922 to a high-powered ex-football player, she divorced him two years later after a stormy marriage. In 1925 she married one of the Atlantic Journal editors, John Marsh, and they lived happily in a simple apartment she liked to call "The Dump."

It was here that she wrote in the 1930s what is widely considered by readers to be the greatest romance novel of all time. By the end of that decade, it would be made into a film that most fans consider the greatest movie ever made. The book won the Pulitzer in 1937 and then the National Book Award. It became the biggest selling American novel in history, and has been printed in forty nations world-wide. In spite of all this acclaim, even having a library named after her in Georgia's Fayette County, Margaret Mitchell never wrote another novel. Hit by a car in 1949 while crossing a street in her native Atlanta, she was buried in the city's Oakland Cemetery. Admirers of Mitchell's novel still visit her grave to this day.

Though it has always been classified a romance, people by-and-large don't think of Gone with the Wind as a romance novel. One possible reason for this has been that in the television generation it's been overshadowed by the movie version. When anyone refers to Gone with the Wind, nowadays, they're almost always referring to the film, not the book. Fans can no longer think of Mitchell's feisty, hot blooded couple, Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, as anyone other than the film's stars, Vivian Leigh and Clark Gable. And since the movie doesn't resemble the paperback romance novels people are familiar with today, it's only natural that filmgoers seldom think of it as romantic. After all, the heroine, Scarlett is scarcely a saint; in fact, she can be downright unlovable. There's a gritty realism to her relationship with Rhett that doesn't square with the idealized world portrayed in the majority of modern romantic novels. There's too much in the plot that comes close to real life situations. Why, the marriage between Rhett and Scarlett doesn't even work out--and there's no happily-ever-after ending!

No, the movie doesn't look or sound like a romance written today. However, what most people don't know is that the movie accurately reflects romance fiction as it existed in the old days. Even if you have never read the book, you can find in the movie all the ingredients that made romantic fiction so vital in the 1930s:

1: Blunt, realistic dialog.

2: A great deal of action.

3: Characters who all wear their emotions on their sleeves.

4: The story continues after marriage, rather than ending with the wedding of Scarlett and Rhett.

5: Very imperfect, very human lead characters.

Indeed, it's the "warts and all" elements of Rhett and Scarlett that make both the film and the book entertaining. Scarlett is so ruthless and Rhett so emotional that they'd never make the grade in a modern romance novel. This is especially true of Rhett, who's incredibly expressive about his feelings. In the current romantic market, it's normally the man who can't express emotion, which his girlfriend must struggle to bring out of him. But Rhett doesn't keep any of his feelings bottled up--he cries, he hollers, and he's the first to say "I love you." As for Scarlett, the strongest romantic heroines today don't come close to her backbone of steel.

Gone with the Wind may have been the cream of the crop, but it wasn't the only best-selling romance book of the old days. There were many, many more, and a multitude of wonderful writers who created a lively and vibrant romance industry long before the Harlequin era.

In this book we're going to explore this unknown territory, and rediscover a world so many fans never dreamed existed.

So pull up a chair, and take a seat in the Old School of romantic fiction...