ABSTRACT
Despite their reputation for “stopping at the bedroom door”, Mills & Boon romances have always been sexual. In the 1920s, when the hero and heroine, although not married, make love for the first time, “The fact of his love was a spar she clung to when strange wild seas engulfed her” (Louise Gerard, The Dancing Boy, 1928:180). In the 1930s when the other man starts to seduce the heroine
[he] began to kiss her in that fierce possessive way that left her excited and unsettled and utterly bewildered … his experienced fingers began their insiduous work, and she lay very still against him, the teddy bear still clasped against her breast.” (Sara Seale, Grace Before Meat, 1938:168)
