title: BHP

text: Billiton's initial ventures included tin and lead smelting in the Netherlands, followed in the 1940s by bauxite mining in Indonesia and Suriname. In 1970, Shell acquired Billiton. Billiton opened a tin smelting and refining plant in Phuket, Thailand, named Thaisarco (for Thailand Smelting And Refining Company, Limited).


title: BHP

text: In 1994, South Africa's Gencor acquired the mining division of Billiton excluding the downstream metal division. Billiton was divested from Gencor in 1997, and was amalgamated with Gold Fields in 1998. In 1997, Billiton plc became a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and in 2001 Billiton plc merged with the Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited (BHP) to form BHP Billiton.


title: BHP

text: The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited (BHP), also known by the nickname "the Big Australian", was incorporated on 13 August 1885, operating the silver and lead mine at Broken Hill, in western New South Wales, Australia. The Broken Hill group floated on 10 August 1885. The first consignment of Broken Hill ore (48 tons, 5 cwt, 3grs) was smelted at the Intercolonial Smelting and Refining Company's works at Spotswood, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne. Historian Christopher Jay notes:


title: BHP

text: The resulting 35,605 ounces of silver raised a lot of interest when exhibited at the City of Melbourne Bank in Collins Street Some sceptics asserted the promoters were merely using silver from somewhere else, to ramp up the shares... Another shareholder, the dominating W. R. Wilson had had to lend William Jamieson, General Manager, a new suit so he could take the first prospectus, printed at Silverton near Broken Hill on 20 June 1885, to Adelaide to start the float process.


title: BHP

text: The geographic Broken Hill, for which the town was named, was discovered and named by Captain Charles Sturt, stirring great interest among prospectors. Nothing of note was discovered until 5 November 1883, when Charles Rasp, boundary rider for the surrounding Mount Gipps Station, pegged out a 40-acre claim with contractors David James and James Poole.


title: BHP

text: Together with a half-dozen backers, including station manager George McCulloch (a young cousin of Victorian Premier Sir James McCulloch), Rasp formed the Broken Hill Company staking out the entire Hill. As costs mounted during the ensuing months of fruitless search, three of the original seven (now remembered as the Syndicate of Seven) sold their shares, so that, on the eve of the company's great success, there were nine shareholders, including Rasp, McCulloch, Philip Charly (aka Charley), David James, James Poole (five of the original syndicate of seven, which had previously included George Urquhart and G.A.M. Lind), Bowes Kelly, W. R. Wilson, and William Jamieson (who'd bought shares from several of the founders).


title: BHP

text: John Darling, Jr. became a director of the company in 1892 and was chairman of directors from 1907 to 1914.


title: BHP

text: Strongly encouraged by the New South Wales Minister for Public Works, Arthur Hill Griffith, in 1915, the company ventured into steel manufacturing, with its operations based primarily in Newcastle, New South Wales. The decision to move from mining ore at Broken Hill to opening a steelworks at Newcastle was due to the technical limitations in recovering value from mining the lower-lying sulphide ores. The discovery of Iron Knob and Iron Monarch near the western shore of the Spencer Gulf in South Australia, combined with the refinement, by BHP metallurgists A. D. Carmichael and Leslie Bradford, of the froth flotation technique for separating zinc sulphides from the accompanying gangue and subsequent conversion (Carmichael–Bradford process) to oxides of the metal, allowed BHP to economically extract valuable metals from the heaps of tailings up to high at the mine site. In 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy targeted the BHP steelworks during the largely unsuccessful shelling of Newcastle.


title: BHP

text: Newcastle operations were closed in 1999, and a 70-ton commemorative sculpture, "The Muster Point", was installed on Industrial Drive, in the suburb of Mayfield, New South Wales. The long products side of the steel business was spun off to form OneSteel in 2000.


title: BHP

text: In the 1950s, BHP began petroleum exploration, which became an increasing focus following oil and natural gas discoveries in Bass Strait in the 1960s.


title: BHP

text: BHP began to diversify into a variety of mining projects overseas. Those included the Ok Tedi copper mine in Papua New Guinea, where the company was successfully sued by the indigenous inhabitants because of the environmental degradation caused by mining operations. BHP had better success with the giant Escondida copper mine in Chile, of which it owns 57.5%, and at the Ekati Diamond Mine in northern Canada, which BHP contracted for in 1996, began mining in 1998, and sold its 80% stake in to Dominion Diamond Corporation in 2013 as production declined.


title: BHP

text: In 2001, BHP merged with the Billiton mining company to form BHP Billiton. In 2002, flat steel products were demerged to form the publicly traded company BHP Steel which, in 2003, became BlueScope.


title: BHP

text: In March 2005, BHP Billiton announced a US$7.3 billion agreed bid for WMC Resources, owners of the Olympic Dam copper, gold and uranium mine in South Australia, nickel operations in Western Australia and Queensland, and a Queensland fertiliser plant. The takeover achieved 90 per cent acceptance on 17 June 2005, and 100 per cent ownership was announced on 2 August 2005, achieved through compulsory acquisition of the remaining 10 percent of the shares.


title: BHP

text: On 8 November 2007, BHP Billiton announced it was seeking to purchase rival mining group Rio Tinto Group in an all-share deal. The initial offer of 3.4 shares of BHP Billiton stock for each share of Rio Tinto was rejected by the board of Rio Tinto for "significantly undervaluing" the company. It was unknown at the time whether BHP Billiton would attempt to purchase Rio Tinto through some form of hostile takeover. A formal hostile bid of 3.4 BHP Billiton shares for each Rio Tinto share was announced on 6 February 2008; The bid was withdrawn 25 November 2008 due to global recession.


title: BHP

text: On 14 May 2008, BHP Billiton shares rose to a record high of A$48.90 following speculation that Chinese mining firm Chinalco was considering purchasing a large stake.


title: BHP

text: As global nickel prices fell, on 25 November 2008, Billiton announced that it would drop its A$66 billion takeover of rival Rio Tinto Group, stating that the "risks to shareholder value" would "increase" to "an unacceptable level" due to the global financial crisis.


title: BHP

text: On 21 January 2009, BHP Billiton then announced that Ravensthorpe Nickel Mine in Western Australia would cease operations, ending shipments of ore from Ravensthorpe to the Yabulu nickel plant in Queensland Australia. Yabulu refinery was subsequently sold to Queensland billionaire Clive Palmer, becoming the Palmer Nickel and Cobalt Refinery. Pinto Valley mine in the United States was also closed. Mine closures and general scaling back during the global financial crisis accounted for 6,000 employee lay offs.


title: BHP

text: As the nickel market became saturated by both spiraling economics and cheaper extraction methods; on 9 December 2009, BHP Billiton sold its Ravensthorpe Nickel Mine, which had cost A$2.4 billion to build, to Vancouver-based First Quantum Minerals for US$340 million. First Quantum, a Canadian company, was one of three bidders for the mine, tendering the lowest offer, and returned the mine to production in 2011. Ravensthorpe cost BHP US$3.6 billion in write-downs when it was shut in January 2009 after less than a year of production.


title: BHP

text: In January 2010, following the BHP Billiton purchase of Athabasca Potash for US$320m, "The Economist" reported that, by 2020, BHP Billiton could produce approximately 15 per cent of the world demand for potash.


title: BHP

text: In August 2010, BHP Billiton made a hostile takeover bid worth US$40 billion for PotashCorp. The bid came after BHP's first bid, made on 17 August, was rejected as being undervalued. This acquisition marked a major strategic move by BHP outside hard commodities and commenced the diversification of its business away from resources with high exposure to carbon price risk, like coal, petroleum and iron ore. The takeover bid was opposed by the Government of Saskatchewan under Premier Brad Wall. On 3 November, Canadian Industry Minister Tony Clement announced the preliminary rejection of the deal under the "Investment Canada Act", giving BHP Billiton 30 days to refine their deal before a final decision was made; BHP withdrew its offer on 14 November 2010.


title: BHP

text: On 22 February 2011, BHP Billiton announced that it had paid $4.75 billion in cash to Chesapeake Energy for its Fayetteville shale assets, which include of mineral rights leases and of pipeline located in north central Arkansas. The wells on the mineral leases are currently producing about 415 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. BHP Billiton planned to spend $800 million to $1 billion a year over 10 years to develop the field and triple production.


title: BHP

text: On 14 July 2011, BHP Billiton announced that it would acquire Petrohawk Energy of the United States for approximately $12.1 billion in cash, considerably expanding its shale natural gas resources in an offer of $US38.75 per share.


title: BHP

text: On 22 August 2012, BHP Billiton announced that it was delaying its US$20 billion (£12 billion) Olympic Dam copper mine expansion project in South Australia to study less capital intensive options, deferring its dual harbour strategy at West Australian Iron Ore and slowing down its Potash growth option in Canada. The company simultaneously announced a freeze on approving any major new expansion projects.


title: BHP

text: Days after announcing the Olympic Dam pull-out, BHP Billiton announced that it was selling its Yeelirrie Uranium Project to Canadian Cameco for a fee of around $430 million. The sale was part of a broader move to step away from resource expansion in Australia.


title: BHP

text: On 19 August 2014, BHP Billiton announced it would create an independent global metals and mining company based on a selection of its aluminium, coal, manganese, nickel, and silver assets. The newly formed entity, named South32, was subsequently demerged with listings on the Australian Securities Exchange the JSE and the London Stock Exchange.


title: BHP

text: In 2015, BHP Billiton spun off a number of its subsidiaries in South Africa and Southern Africa to form a new company known as South32.


title: BHP

text: BHP Billiton agreed to pay a fine of $25 million to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in 2015 in connection with violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act related to its "hospitality program" at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. BHP Billiton invited 176 government and state-owned-enterprise officials to attend the Games on an all-expenses-paid package. While BHP Billiton claimed to have compliance processes in place to avoid conflicts of interest, the SEC found that BHP Billiton had invited officials from at least four countries where BHP Billiton had interests in influencing the officials' decisions (Congo, Guinea, Philippines and Burundi).


title: BHP

text: Towards the end of 2016 BHP Billiton indicated it would expand its petroleum business and make new investments in the sector.


title: BHP

text: In February 2017, BHP Billiton announced a $2.2 billion investment in the new BP platform in the Gulf of Mexico. During the same year, as part of their plan to increase productivity at the Escondida mine in Chile, which is the world's biggest copper mine, BHP Billiton attempted to get workers to accept a 4-year pay freeze, a 66% reduction in the end-of-conflict bonus offering, and increased shift flexibility. This resulted in a major workers' strike and forced the company to declare "force majeure" on two shipments, which drove copper prices up by 4%.


title: BHP

text: In April 2017 activist hedge fund manager Elliott Advisors proposed a plan for BHP Billiton to spin off its American petroleum assets and significantly restructure the business, including the scrapping of its dual Sydney-London listing, suggesting shares be offered only in the United Kingdom, while leaving its headquarters and tax residences in Australia where shares would trade as depository instruments. At the time of the correspondence Elliott held about 4.1 per cent of the issued shares in London-listed BHP Billiton plc, worth $3.81 billion. Australia's government warned it would block moves to shift BHP Billiton's stock listing from Australia to the United Kingdom. Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison said the move would be contrary to the country's national interest and would breach government orders mandating a listing on the Australian Securities Exchange. BHP Billiton dismissed the plan saying the costs and risks of Elliott's proposal outweighed any potential benefits.


title: BHP

text: In May 2017, with much of the former Billiton assets having been disposed of, BHP Billiton began to rebrand itself as BHP, at first in Australia and then globally. It replaced the slogan "The Big Australian" with "Think Big", with an advertising campaign rolling out in mid May 2017. Work on the change began in late 2015 according to BHP's chief external affairs officer.


title: BHP

text: In August 2017, BHP announced that it would sell off its US shale oil and gas business. In July 2018, the company agreed to sell its shale assets to BP for $10.5 billion. BHP indicated its intention to return funds to investors. On 29 September 2018, BHP completed the sale of its Fayetteville Onshore US gas assets to a wholly owned subsidiary of Merit Energy Company.


title: BHP

text: In August 2021, BHP announced plans to exit the oil and gas industry by merging its hydrocarbon business with Woodside Petroleum, Australia's largest independent gas producer. It also announced its intention to delist from the London Stock Exchange and consolidate on the Australian Securities Exchange. This occurred in January 2022.


title: BHP

text: Until January 2022, BHP was a dual-listed company; the Australian "BHP Billiton Limited" and the British "BHP Billiton plc" were separately listed with separate shareholder bodies, while conducting business as one operation with identical boards of directors and a single management structure. The headquarters of BHP Billiton Limited and the global headquarters of the combined group were located in Melbourne, Australia. The headquarters of BHP Billiton plc are located in London, England. Its main office locations are in Australia, the U.S., Canada, the UK, Chile, Malaysia, and Singapore.


title: BHP

text: BHP Billiton Limited and BHP Billiton plc were renamed BHP Group Limited and BHP Group plc, respectively, on 19 November 2018.


title: BHP

text: In 1998, BHP hired American Paul Anderson to restructure the company. Anderson successfully completed the four-year project with a merger between BHP and London-based Billiton. In July 2002, Brian Gilbertson of Billiton was appointed CEO, but resigned after just six months, citing irreconcilable differences with the board.


title: BHP

text: Upon Gilbertson's departure in early 2003, Chip Goodyear was appointed the new CEO, increasing sales by 47 percent and profits by 78 percent during his tenure. Goodyear retired on 30 September 2007. Marius Kloppers was Goodyear's successor. Following Kloppers' tenure, Andrew Mackenzie, chief executive of Non-Ferrous, assumed the role of CEO in 2013. Australia mining head Mike Henry succeeded Mackenzie on 1 January 2020.


title: BHP

text: BHP has mining operations in Australia, North America, and South America, and petroleum operations in the U.S., Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, the UK, and Algeria.


title: BHP

text: BHP is listed as one of the 90 fossil fuel extraction and marketing companies responsible for two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions since the beginning of the industrial age. Its cumulative emissions as of 2010 have been estimated at 7,606 Mte, representing 0.52% of global industrial emissions between 1751 and 2010, ranking it the 19th-largest corporate polluter. According to BHP management 10% of these emissions are from direct operations, while 90% come from products sold by the company. BHP has been voluntarily reporting its direct GHG emissions since 1996. In 2013, it was criticised for lobbying against carbon pricing in Australia.


title: BHP

text: BHP reported total CO2e emissions (Direct + Indirect) for the twelve months ending 30 June 2020 at 15,800 Kt.


title: BHP

text: The Ok Tedi environmental disaster caused severe harm to the environment along the Ok Tedi River and the Fly River in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea between around 1984 and 2013. In 1999, BHP reported that 90 million tons of mine waste was annually discharged into the river for more than ten years and destroyed downstream villages, agriculture and fisheries. Mine wastes were deposited along of the Ok Tedi and the Fly River below its confluence with the Ok Tedi, and over an area of . BHP's CEO, Paul Anderson, said that the Ok Tedi Mine was "not compatible with our environmental values and the company should never have become involved." , mine operators continued to discharge 80 million tons of tailings, overburden, and mine-induced erosion into the river system each year. About of forest has died or is under stress. As many as may eventually be harmed.


title: BHP

text: In the 1990s the communities of the lower Fly Region, including the Yonggom people, sued BHP and received US$28.6 million in an out-of-court settlement, which was the culmination of an enormous public-relations campaign against the company by environmental groups. As part of the settlement, a (limited) dredging operation was put in place and efforts were made to rehabilitate the site around the mine. However, the mine is still in operation and waste continues to flow into the river system. BHP was granted legal indemnity from future mine related damages. Experts predict that it will take 300 years to clean up the toxic contamination.


title: BHP

text: In 2015, the company was involved in the Bento Rodrigues tailings dam collapse, the worst environmental disaster in the history of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. On 5 November 2015, an iron ore mine tailings dam near Mariana, south-eastern Brazil, owned and operated by Samarco, a subsidiary of BHP and Vale, suffered a catastrophic failure, devastating the nearby town of Bento Rodrigues with the mudflow, killing 19 people, injuring more than 50 and causing enormous ecological damage, and threatening life along the Rio Doce and the Atlantic Ocean near the mouth of the Rio Doce. The accident was one of the biggest environmental disasters in Brazil's history.


title: BHP

text: An investigation into the disaster commissioned by BHP, Vale and Samarco found the collapse was due to a variety of construction and design flaws. In June 2018, Samarco, Vale and BHP signed an agreement to drop a US$7 billion lawsuit and allow two years for the companies to address the greater US$55 billion suit seeking social, environmental and economic compensation.


title: BHP

text: BHP has been accused of perpetrating irregularities with respect to drawing waters above the granted limit from the aquafiers. Due to which the water table has dropped significantly, making land-based livelihoods less viable for people of the community, many of whom have been forced to relocate to urban areas. In January 2021, the Supreme Court of Chile validated the objections of local indigenous tribes about BHP's water usage and impacts on wetland areas. Later in July, the same court ordered BHP to begin the application process for Cerro Colorado operating permits from scratch.


title: BHP

text: From 2019 to 2021, BHP registered six cases of sexual assault and seventy three cases of sexual harassment. A survey of 425 workers conducted by The Western Mine Workers' Alliance, showed that two-thirds of female respondents had experienced verbal sexual harassment while working in the FIFO mining industry, with 36% of women and 10% of men having experienced some form of harassment in the last 12 months. In response, BHP terminated or otherwise permanently removed forty eight workers from its sites.


title: BHP

text: Bad weather caused a BHP Billiton helicopter to crash in Angola on 16 November 2007, killing the helicopter's five passengers. The deceased were: BHP Billiton Angola Chief Operating Officer David Hopgood (Australian), Angola Technical Services Operations Manager Kevin Ayre (British), Wild Dog Helicopters pilot Kottie Breedt (South African), Guy Sommerfield (British) of MMC and Louwrens Prinsloo (Namibian) of Prinsloo Drilling. The helicopter crashed approximately from the Alto Cuilo diamond exploration camp in Lunda Norte, northeastern Angola. BHP Billiton responded by suspending operations in the country.


title: American Dad! (season 19)

text: The nineteenth season of "American Dad!" premiered on TBS on January 24, 2022 and started airing on late night block Adult Swim on January 30, 2022. and ended on December 19, 2022. It has been renewed for seasons 20 and 21.


title: American Dad! (season 19)

text: At Comic-Con 2022, showrunner Matt Weitzman revealed the penultimate episode of Season 19, "Echoes" was intended to serve as the series finale, amid the restructuring of Warner Bros. Discovery's content, at the time leaving the show's fate in jeopardy.


title: Prester John

text: Prester John () was a legendary Christian patriarch, presbyter, and king. Stories popular in Europe in the 12th to the 17th centuries told of a Nestorian patriarch and king who was said to rule over a Christian nation lost amid the pagans and Muslims in the Orient. The accounts were often embellished with various tropes of medieval popular fantasy, depicting Prester John as a descendant of the Three Magi, ruling a kingdom full of riches, marvels, and strange creatures.


title: Prester John

text: At first, Prester John was imagined to reside in India. Tales of the Nestorian Christians' evangelistic success there and of Thomas the Apostle's subcontinental travels as documented in works like the "Acts of Thomas" probably provided the first seeds of the legend. After the coming of the Mongols to the Western world, accounts placed the king in Central Asia, and eventually Portuguese explorers came to believe that the term was a reference to Ethiopia, by which time it had been an isolated Christian "exclave" distant from any other Christian-ruled territory.


title: Prester John

text: Though its immediate genesis is unclear, the legend of Prester John drew strongly from earlier accounts of the Orient and of Westerners' travels there. Particularly influential were the stories of Saint Thomas the Apostle's proselytizing in India, recorded especially in the third-century work known as the "Acts of Thomas". This text inculcated in Westerners an image of India as a place of exotic wonders and offered the earliest description of Saint Thomas establishing a Christian sect there, motifs that loomed large over later accounts of Prester John.


title: Prester John

text: Similarly, distorted reports of movements in Asia of the Church of the East (Nestorianism) informed the legend as well. This church had gained a wide following in the Eastern nations and engaged the Western imagination as an assemblage both exotic and familiarly Christian. Particularly inspiring were the Church of the East's missionary successes among the Mongols and Turks of Central Asia; French historian René Grousset suggests that the Prester John story may have had its origins in the Kerait clan, which had thousands of its members join the Church of the East shortly after the year 1000. By the 12th century, the Kerait rulers were still following a custom of bearing Christian names, which may have fueled the legend.


title: Prester John

text: Additionally, the tradition may have drawn from the shadowy early Christian figure John the Presbyter of Syria, whose existence is first inferred by the ecclesiastical historian and bishop Eusebius of Caesarea based on his reading of earlier church fathers. This man, said in one document to be the author of two of the Epistles of John, was supposed to have been the teacher of the martyr bishop Papias, who had in turn taught Irenaeus. However, little links this figure, supposedly active in the late first century, to the Prester John legend beyond the name. The title "Prester" is an adaptation of the Greek word "πρεσβύτερος, presbuteros", literally meaning "elder" and used as a title of priests holding a high office (indeed, "presbyter" is the origin of the English word "priest").


title: Prester John

text: Later accounts of Prester John borrowed heavily from literary texts concerning the East, including the great body of ancient and medieval geographical and travel literature. Details were often lifted from literary and pseudohistorical accounts, such as the tale of Sinbad the Sailor. The "Alexander Romance", a fabulous account of Alexander the Great's conquests, was especially influential in this regard.


title: Prester John

text: The Prester John legend as such began in the early 12th century with reports of visits of an archbishop of India to Constantinople, and of a Patriarch of India to Rome at the time of Pope Callixtus II. These visits, apparently from the Saint Thomas Christians of India, cannot be confirmed, evidence of both being secondhand reports. What is certain is that German chronicler Otto of Freising reported in his "Chronicon" of 1145 that the previous year he had met Hugh, bishop of Jabala in Syria, at the court of Pope Eugene III in Viterbo. Hugh was an emissary of Prince Raymond of Antioch, sent to seek Western aid against the Saracens after the Siege of Edessa; his counsel inspired Eugene to call for the Second Crusade. Hugh told Otto, in the presence of the pope, that Prester John, a Nestorian Christian who served in the dual position of priest and king, had regained the city of Ecbatana from the brother monarchs of Medes and Persia, the Samiardi, in a great battle "not many years ago". Afterwards Prester John allegedly set out for Jerusalem to rescue the Holy Land, but the swollen waters of the Tigris compelled him to return to his own country. His fabulous wealth was demonstrated by his emerald scepter; his holiness by his descent from the Three Magi.


title: Prester John

text: Robert Silverberg connects this account with historic events of 1141, when the Qara Khitai khanate under Yelü Dashi defeated the Seljuk Turks in the Battle of Qatwan, near Samarkand. The Seljuks ruled over Persia at the time and were the most powerful force in the Muslim world; the defeat at Samarkand weakened them substantially. The Qara Khitai at the time were Buddhists, not Christians, and there is no reason to suppose Yelü Dashi was ever called Prester John. However, several vassals of the Qara Khitai practiced Nestorian Christianity, which may have contributed to the legend. It is also possible that the Europeans, who were unfamiliar with Buddhism, assumed that if the leader was not Muslim, he must be Christian. The defeat encouraged the Crusaders and inspired a notion of deliverance from the East. It is possible Otto recorded Hugh's confused report to prevent complacency in the Crusade's European backers – according to his account, no help could be expected from a powerful Eastern king.


title: Prester John

text: No more of the tale is recorded until about 1165 when copies of what was likely a forged "Letter of Prester John" started spreading throughout Europe. An epistolary wonder tale with parallels suggesting its author knew the "Romance of Alexander" and the above-mentioned "Acts of Thomas", the "Letter" was supposedly written to the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus by Prester John, descendant of one of the Three Magi and King of India. The many marvels of richness and magic it contained captured the imagination of Europeans, and it was translated into numerous languages, including Hebrew. It circulated in ever more embellished form for centuries in manuscripts, examples of which still exist. The invention of printing perpetuated the letter's popularity in printed form; it was still current in popular culture during the period of European exploration. Part of the letter's essence was that a lost kingdom of Nestorian Christians still existed in the vastness of Central Asia.


title: Prester John

text: The credence given to the reports was such that Pope Alexander III sent a letter to Prester John via his physician Philip on September 27, 1177. Nothing more is recorded of Philip, but it is most probable that he did not return with word from Prester John. The "Letter" continued to circulate, accruing more embellishments with each copy. In modern times, textual analysis of the letter's variant Hebrew versions has suggested an origin among the Jews of northern Italy or Languedoc: several Italian words remained in the Hebrew texts. At any rate, the "Letter"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s author was most likely a Westerner.


title: Prester John

text: In 1221, Jacques de Vitry, Bishop of Acre, returned from the disastrous Fifth Crusade with good news: King David of India, the son or grandson of Prester John, had mobilized his armies against the Saracens. He had already conquered Persia, then under the Khwarazmian Empire's control, and was moving on towards Baghdad as well. This descendant of the great king who had defeated the Seljuks in 1141 planned to reconquer and rebuild Jerusalem. Controversial Soviet historian and ethnologist Lev Gumilev speculated that the much reduced crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Levant resuscitated this legend in order to raise Christian hopes and to persuade European monarchs who had lost interest by that time in getting involved in costly crusades in a distant region that was far removed from their own states and affairs. The bishop of Acre was correct in thinking that a great king had conquered Persia; however "King David", as it turned out, was the Tengrist Mongol ruler, Genghis Khan.


title: Prester John

text: The Mongol Empire's rise gave Western Christians the opportunity to visit lands that they had never seen before, and they set out in large numbers along the empire's secure roads. Belief that a lost Nestorian kingdom existed in the east, or that the Crusader states' salvation depended on an alliance with an Eastern monarch, was one reason for the numerous Christian ambassadors and missionaries sent to the Mongols. These include Franciscan explorers Giovanni da Pian del Carpine in 1245 and William of Rubruck in 1253.


title: Prester John

text: The link between Prester John and Genghis Khan was elaborated upon at this time, as the Prester became identified with Genghis' foster father, Toghrul, king of the Keraites, given the Jin title Ong Khan Toghrul. Fairly truthful chroniclers and explorers such as Marco Polo, Crusader-historian Jean de Joinville, and the Franciscan voyager Odoric of Pordenone stripped Prester John of much of his otherworldly veneer, portraying him as a more realistic earthly monarch. Odoric places John's land to the west of Cathay en route to Europe, and identifies its capital as "Cosan", variously interpreted by translators as a number of names and locations. Joinville describes Genghis Khan in his chronicle as a "wise man" who unites all the Tartar tribes and leads them to victory against their strongest enemy, Prester John. William of Rubruck says a certain "Vut", lord of the Keraites and brother to the Nestorian "King" John, was defeated by the Mongols under Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan made off with Vut's daughter and married her to his son, and their union produced Möngke, the Khan at the time William wrote. According to Marco Polo's "Travels", the war between the Prester and Genghis Khan started when Genghis Khan, new ruler of the rebellious Tartars, asked for the hand of Prester John's daughter in marriage. Angered that his lowly vassal would make such a request, Prester John denied him in no uncertain terms. In the war that followed, Genghis Khan triumphed, and Prester John perished.


title: Prester John

text: The historical figure behind these accounts, Toghrul, was in fact a Nestorian Christian monarch defeated by Genghis Khan. He had fostered the future Khan after the death of his father Yesugei and was one of his early allies, but the two had a falling-out. After Toghrul rejected a proposal to wed his son and daughter to Genghis Khan's children, the rift between them grew until war broke out in 1203. Genghis Khan captured Sorghaghtani Beki, daughter of Toghrul's brother Jaqa Gambu, and married her to his son Tolui; they had several children, including Möngke, Kublai, Hulagu, and Ariq Böke.


title: Prester John

text: The major characteristic of Prester John tales from this period is the king's portrayal not as an invincible hero, but merely one of many adversaries defeated by the Mongols. But as the Mongol Empire collapsed, Europeans began to shift away from the idea that Prester John had ever really been a Central Asian king. At any rate they had little hope of finding him there, as travel in the region became dangerous without the security the empire had provided. In works such as "The Travels of Sir John Mandeville" and "Historia Trium Regum" by John of Hildesheim, Prester John's domain tends to regain its fantastic aspects and finds itself located not on the steppes of Central Asia, but back in India proper, or some other exotic locale. Wolfram von Eschenbach tied the history of Prester John to the Holy Grail legend in his poem "Parzival", in which the Prester is the son of the Grail maiden and the Saracen knight Feirefiz.


title: Prester John

text: A theory was put forward by the Russian scholar Ph. Bruun in 1876, who suggested that Prester John might be found among the kings of Georgia, which, at the time of Crusades, experienced military resurgence challenging the Muslim power. However, this theory, though regarded with certain indulgence by Henry Yule and some modern Georgian historians, was summarily dismissed by Friedrich Zarncke. The connection with Georgia is unlikely, considering that country was Orthodox, rather than Nestorian, and due to the fact that it and its predecessor states Colchis/Lazica and Iberia were well known and documented at the time, with Episcopoi of Kartli having regular epistolary conversions with Bishops of Rome.


title: Prester John

text: Prester John had been considered the ruler of India since the legend's beginnings, but "India" was a vague concept to the medieval Europeans. Writers often spoke of the "Three Indias", and lacking any real knowledge of the Indian Ocean they sometimes considered Ethiopia one of the three. Westerners knew that Ethiopia was a powerful Christian nation, but contact had been sporadic since the rise of Islam. No Prester John was to be found in Asia, so Europeans began to suggest that the legend was a reference to the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia. Evidence has suggested that locating Prester John's kingdom in Ethiopia entered the collective consciousness around 1250.


title: Prester John

text: Marco Polo had discussed Ethiopia as a magnificent Christian land and Orthodox Christians had a legend that the nation would one day rise up and invade Arabia, but they did not place Prester John there. Then in 1306, 30 Ethiopian ambassadors from Emperor Wedem Arad came to Europe, and Prester John was mentioned as the patriarch of their church in a record of their visit. Another description of an African Prester John is in the "Mirabilia Descripta" of Dominican missionary Jordanus, around 1329. In discussing the "Third India", Jordanus records a number of fanciful stories about the land and its king, whom he says Europeans call Prester John.


title: Prester John

text: After this point, an African location became increasingly popular. This may have resulted from increasing ties between Europe and Africa as 1428 saw the Kings of Aragon and Ethiopia actively negotiating the possibility of a strategic marriage between the two kingdoms. On 7 May 1487, two Portuguese envoys, Pêro da Covilhã and Afonso de Paiva, were sent traveling secretly overland to gather information on a possible sea route to India, but also to inquire about Prester John. Covilhã managed to reach Ethiopia. Although well received, he was forbidden to depart. Contact for the purpose of finding allies, such as with Prester John increasingly fueled early European exploration and colonialism. More envoys were sent in 1507, after the island of Socotra was taken by the Portuguese. As a result of this mission, and facing Muslim expansion, regent queen Eleni of Ethiopia sent ambassador Mateus to king Manuel I of Portugal and to the pope, in search of a coalition. Mateus reached Portugal via Goa, having returned with a Portuguese embassy, along with priest Francisco Álvares in 1520. Francisco Álvares's book, which included the testimony of Covilhã, the "Verdadeira Informação das Terras do Preste João das Indias" ("A True Relation of the Lands of Prester John of the Indies") was the first direct account of Ethiopia, greatly increasing European knowledge at the time, as it was presented to the pope, published and quoted by Giovanni Battista Ramusio.


title: Prester John

text: By the time Emperor Lebna Dengel and the Portuguese had established diplomatic contact with each other in 1520, Prester John was the name by which Europeans knew the Emperor of Ethiopia. The Ethiopians, though, had never called their emperor that. When ambassadors from Emperor Zara Yaqob attended the Council of Florence in 1441, they were confused when (Roman Catholic-led) council prelates insisted to the Ethiopians to refer to themselves as representatives of their monarch Prester John. They tried to explain that nowhere in Zara Yaqob's list of regnal names did that title occur. However, their admonitions did little to stop Europeans from calling the King of Ethiopia Prester John. Some writers who used the title did understand it was not an indigenous honorific; for instance Jordanus seems to use it simply because his readers would have been familiar with it, not because he thought it authentic.


title: Prester John

text: Ethiopia has been claimed for many years as the origin of the Prester John legend, but most modern experts believe that the legend was simply adapted to fit that nation in the same fashion that it had been projected upon Ong Khan and Central Asia during the 13th century. Modern scholars find nothing about Prester John or his country in the early material that would make Ethiopia a more suitable identification than any place else, and furthermore, specialists in Ethiopian history have effectively demonstrated that the story was not widely known there until the Portuguese began to circumnavigate around Africa, which is how they reached Ethiopia (via the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea). Czech Franciscan Remedius Prutky asked Emperor Iyasu II about this identification in 1751, and Prutky states that the man was "astonished, and told me that the kings of Abyssinia had never been accustomed to call themselves by this name." In a footnote to this passage, Richard Pankhurst states that this is apparently the first recorded statement by an Ethiopian monarch about this tale, and they were likely unaware of the title until Prutky's inquiry.


title: Prester John

text: Seventeenth-century academics like German orientalist Hiob Ludolf demonstrated that there was no actual native connection between Prester John and the Ethiopian monarchs, and search for the fabled king gradually ceased. But the legend had affected several hundred years of European and world history, directly and indirectly, by encouraging Europe's explorers, missionaries, scholars, and treasure hunters.


title: Prester John

text: The prospect of finding Prester John had long since vanished, but the tales continued to inspire through the 20th century. William Shakespeare's 1600 play "Much Ado About Nothing" contains an early modern reference to the legendary king, as does Tirso de Molina's "El Burlador de Sevilla". In 1910 Scottish novelist and politician John Buchan used the legend in his sixth book, "Prester John", to supplement a plot about a Zulu uprising in South Africa. This book is an archetypal example of the early 20th-century adventure novel, and proved very popular in its day.


title: Prester John

text: Throughout the rest of the century, Prester John appeared sporadically in pulp fiction and comics. For example, Marvel Comics has featured "Prester John" in issues of "Fantastic Four" and "Thor". He was a significant supporting character in several issues of the DC Comics fantasy series "Arak: Son of Thunder". Charles Williams, a member of the 20th-century literary group the Inklings, made Prester John a messianic protector of the Holy Grail in his 1930 novel "War in Heaven". Prester John and his kingdom feature in two works by Umberto Eco. The first is the 2000 novel "Baudolino", in which the titular protagonist enlists his friends to write the "Letter of Prester John" for his adoptive father Frederick Barbarossa, but it is stolen before they can send it out. The second is in "Serendipities: Language and Lunacy" (1998) on the chapter 'The Force of Falsity' where Eco pronounces that the letter from Prester John "... served as an alibi for the expansion of the Christian world..."


title: Prester John

text: In July 1986 issues, Avram Davidson published both a nonfiction essay, "Postscript on Prester John" in Asimov's Science Fiction (part of his "Adventures in Unhistory" series, and later republished in his 1993 book of that title), and a fantasy short story featuring Prester John's realm secretly still ruled by his descendant, "The King Across the Mountains" in Amazing Stories (later republished in "The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy", 1990).


title: Prester John

text: In 1988 the novel "The Dragonbone Chair" would use the name Prester John as the name of the High King of the fantasy world of Osten Ard.


title: Prester John

text: He is also mentioned in the Vertigo imprint comic "Fables", and the recently deceased king in Tad Williams' "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn" fantasy books is named "Prester John".


title: Prester John

text: The first single from American experimental pop band Animal Collective's 2022 album "Time Skiffs" is called "Prester John".


title: Prester John

text: Various attributed arms have been given to Prester John. The nave of Canterbury Cathedral, which is adorned with heraldic bosses, represents Prester John with "Azure, the Saviour on the Cross or". In the 16th century, cartographer Abraham Ortelius produced a speculative map of John's empire in Africa, featuring "A lion rampant facing to the sinister holding in its paws a quasi-Tau cross of full height".


title: Continental AG

text: Continental AG, commonly known as Continental or colloquially as Conti, is a German multinational automotive parts manufacturing company specializing in brake systems, interior electronics, automotive safety, powertrain and chassis components, tachographs, tires and other parts for the automotive and transportation industries. Continental is structured into six divisions: Chassis and Safety, Powertrain, Interior, Tires, ContiTech, ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems). It is headquartered in Hanover, Lower Saxony. Continental is the world's fourth-largest tire manufacturer.


title: Continental AG

text: Continental sells tires for automobiles, motorcycles, and bicycles worldwide under the Continental brand. It also produces and sells other brands with more select distribution such as Viking (limited global presence), General (US/Canada), Gislaved (Canada, Spain, Nordic Markets), Semperit Tyres, Barum to serve EU & Russia. Other brands are "Uniroyal" (Europe), Sportiva, Mabor and Matador and formerly Sime/Simex tyres (now Dunlop Tyres Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei). Continental's customers include all major automobile, truck and bus producers, such as Volkswagen, Daimler AG, BharatBenz, Ford, Volvo, Iveco, Schmitz, Koegel, Freightliner Trucks, BMW, General Motors, Toyota, Honda, Renault, PSA and Porsche.


title: Continental AG

text: Continental was founded in 1871 as a rubber manufacturer, "Continental-Caoutchouc und Gutta-Percha Compagnie". In 1898, Continental started development and production of the vehicle tires with plain tread, which was the major success of the brand. In 1904, Continental became the first company in the world to manufacture grooved vehicle tires. Another major product Continental invented was detachable wheel tire that was made for touring vehicles (1905). In the late 1920s, Continental merged with several other major rubber industry companies to form the largest rubber company in Germany "Continental Gummi-Werke AG".


title: Continental AG

text: When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, all members of the Board of Management as well as the authorized signatories and directors of the second management level were obliged to join the Nazi party, the Works Council was purged of "opponents of the regime," and all Jewish members of the Supervisory Board were forced to resign. As early as the end of 1933, the Executive Board could proudly announce that Continental was now "a Christian and purely German company"


title: Continental AG

text: As with many other German companies during World War II, Continental used slave labor provided by the Nazi Party in their factories in the 1940s at Hannover-Stöcken, Hannover-Limmer, Hannover-Ahlem, and others, all offshoots of the Neuengamme concentration camp.


title: Continental AG

text: Continental teamed up with FATE in 1999 for the production of tires for cars, trucks, and buses in Argentina and exportation of the San Fernando plant's production to the rest of South America.


title: Continental AG

text: In 2001, Continental acquired a controlling interest in Temic, DaimlerChrysler's automotive-electronics business, which is now part of Continental Automotive Systems. The company also purchased German automotive rubber and plastics company Phoenix AG in 2004, and the automotive electronics unit of Motorola in 2006. Continental acquired Siemens VDO from Siemens AG in 2007. Also in 2007, the company began to construct a plant in Costa Rica to produce powertrain components for North America. The plant was to open in two phases and ultimately employ 550 workers.


title: Continental AG

text: In 2008, Continental appeared overextended with its integration of VDO and had since lost almost half of its market capitalisation when it found itself to be the hostile takeover target of the family-owned Schaeffler AG. By 2009, Schaeffler successfully installed the head of its motor division at the helm of Continental.


title: Continental AG

text: Continental was ranked third in global OEM automotive parts sales in 2012 according to a study sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers. On 6 September 2012, Continental returned to the benchmark DAX index of 30 selected German blue chip stocks after a 45-month absence. IHO Group (investment holding of the Schaeffler family) is the controlling shareholder and currently owns 46% of Continental shares. In November 2018, Continental purchased Kmart Tyre and Auto in Australia from Wesfarmers for A$350 million.


title: Continental AG

text: On 13 November 2020, it was announced that Nikolai Setzer would take over as CEO following the short-notice resignation of Elmar Degenhart.


title: Continental AG

text: In February 2021, Continental announced that it acquired a minority stake in Recogni, a German-U.S. start-up, to advance its autonomous driving technology. The start-up is working on a new chip architecture for object recognition in real time based on artificial intelligence.


title: Continental AG

text: In December 2021, as a result of a diplomatic spat between Lithuania and China over Taiwan and human rights China pressured Continental AG to stop doing business with Lithuania.


title: Continental AG

text: In April 2022, Continental resumed production of tires in Russia despite International sanctions during the Russo-Ukrainian War due to 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: Continental AG

text: Body & Security is leading the development of Vehicle Electronics and Cabin Control Systems, with R&D locations in Germany, United States, China, Singapore, Mexico, India, and many other locations around the world, allowing a global reach to nearly every market region.


title: Continental AG

text: When Continental decided to purchase ITT Industries' brake and chassis business for $1.93 billion in 1998, the head of ITT's brake division, Juergen M. Geissinger, was hired as the CEO of the family-owned bearing and auto parts manufacturer Schaeffler Group.


title: Continental AG

text: Ten years later, Geissinger returned to Continental with mother-and-son owners Maria-Elisabeth and Georg Schaeffler and a consortium of banks, to buy control of the company. Continental appeared to have overextended itself with the acquisition of Siemens' VDO automotive unit in 2007 for €11.4 billion and had lost almost half of its market capitalisation since.


title: Continental AG

text: In August 2008 and after a protracted standoff, Continental agreed to be taken over by the Schaeffler Group in a deal that valued the company at approximately €12 billion. Schaeffler in return agreed to limit its position to less than 50% for a period of four years and support Continental's ongoing strategy. This arrangement was overseen by former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Continental's CEO , who had opposed Schaeffler's offer, resigned and was succeeded by on 1 September 2008. Less than one year later, Schaeffler's CEO Juergen Geissinger succeeded in installing his longtime confidant (and former leader and later head of ITT Teves/Continental Brake and Chassis Division) Elmar Degenhart, the head of his automotive division, as the new chief executive of Continental, ousting Neumann. At Continental's 2013 annual shareholder meeting Schaeffler gave notice that it will terminate its mutual investment agreement with Continental in May 2014, on which Elmar Degenhart commented, "Notice of termination of the investment agreement is understandable from the vantage point of Schaeffler, our anchor shareholder. We are confident that the two companies will continue their very good and goal-oriented cooperation on into the future."


title: Continental AG

text: Continental Tire entered the North American tire industry with its 1987 purchase of General Tire from GenCorp, forming Continental General Tire Corp . At the time, Continental was following other tire manufacturers, such as Bridgestone and Michelin, into the American tire market.


title: Continental AG

text: The headquarters for North and South American tire divisions is located in the Charlotte metropolitan area at Fort Mill, South Carolina, United States. The North American headquarters of the CAS division is located in Auburn Hills, Michigan, directly east of the Great Lakes Crossing mall. Continental also has a research and development arm in the tech-heavy Silicon Valley, where, among other things, the company focuses on developing technologies supporting autonomous driving vehicles.


title: Continental AG

text: From 2002 through 2005, the subsidiary sponsored a new college football bowl game in Charlotte, North Carolina, known for three playings as the Continental Tire Bowl. At the time, Continental was a major employer in Charlotte. However, as financial woes set in at the division Meineke Car Care Center took over sponsorship of the Charlotte bowl game from Continental. The first two Continental Tire Bowls were both won by Virginia; the third and final (by that name) edition of the bowl was won by Boston College.


title: Continental AG

text: The subsidiary announced that effective 1 January 2006, it would implement massive cuts on health care for retirees across the country. After a class-action lawsuit, the company and United Steelworkers union, representing the retirees, agreed to a settlement whereby the company would continue to fund benefits. Later that year, it announced it would cease tire production in Charlotte and would close its tire production plant in Mayfield, Kentucky.


title: Continental AG

text: In 2011, CTA announced that it would build a plant in Sumter, South Carolina. The plant will cost about $500 million and employ 1,600 workers by 2020.


title: Continental AG

text: In February 2016, CTA announced that it would build a Commercial Tire plant in Clinton, Mississippi, with an investment totaling approximately $1.4 billion and employing 2,500 people when the plant reaches full capacity in the next decade.


title: Continental AG

text: Continental was one of the companies bidding to work with GM to provide the battery pack for the Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicle (E-REV). It is the primary contractor for a system using lithium-ion batteries from A123 Systems. GM instead signed a contract to assemble packs with cells purchased from Compact Power.


title: Continental AG

text: Continental continues to look at developments and innovation in the field of Automotive electrical-energy storage systems. These include developing solutions for gasoline and diesel driven engines as well as the rapidly-developing area of electrified systems. By offering a comprehensive technology toolkit to auto manufacturers, they enable these manufacturers to develop customised electrification in their vehicles, resulting in more efficient systems that produce lower emissions.


title: Continental AG

text: In April 2016, Continental AG together with Honda's US subsidiary, were honored with the 2016 Automotive News PACE Innovation Partnership Award for the Bidirectional Long Range Communications (BLRC) System, developed by the Body and Security Team in the Interior Division. The Radio Frequency Device, helps the car user to operate a remote control key fob from more than half a kilometer away, to start the engine and climate control function, while receiving feedback from the vehicle (such as locked/unlocked). The Radio Frequency System, powered by a single standard coin cell, and an innovative vehicle-mounted RF transceiver, was developed together by Honda and Continental, and was debuted on the Acura MDX in 2013 and was quickly followed by the Acura TLX and Acura RLX in 2014.


title: Continental AG

text: In 2015, Continental AG was honored with two PACE Awards for its Bare Die High-Density-Interconnect (BD-HDI) Printed Circuit Board Substrate Technology for Transmission Electronics and its Multi-application Unified Sensor Element (MUSE).


title: Continental AG

text: In 2018, Continental won a PACE (Premier Automotive Suppliers' Contribution to Excellence) Award for its Digital Micromirror Head-Up Display technology. Along with Audi, Continental also received an Innovation Partnership Award for their Safety Domain Control Unit (SDCU).


title: Continental AG

text: In 2020, Continental won an inaugural PACEpilot award for its Virtual A-Pillar technology that helps to eliminate forward blind spots. PACEpilot is an offshoot of the long-standing PACE awards, and the programmes seeks to recognise innovations in automative technology that have moved to the working model phase of testing.


title: Continental AG

text: Continental AG has acquired the American rubber company Veyance Technologies Inc. based in Fairlawn, Ohio. Veyance will be integrated into the company's ContiTech division, and will serve as the regional home office for ContiTech in North America.


title: Continental AG

text: The Brazilian antitrust authority Council for Economic Defence (CADE) made it official on 29 January 2015, described in a press release on the 30th, from the company. The total transition was $1.6 billion. The company will divest Veyance's NAFTA air springs business in Mexico and its Brazilian steel-cord belting business in response to some of the concerns raised by antitrust authorities, the release said, employing about 600 people work in those operations.


title: Romance novel

text: A romance novel or romantic novel generally refers to a type of genre fiction novel which places its primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and usually has an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Precursors include authors of literary fiction, such as Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Brontë.


title: Romance novel

text: There are many subgenres of the romance novel, including fantasy, gothic, contemporary, historical romance, paranormal fiction, and science fiction. Although women are the main readers of romance novels a growing number of men enjoy them as well. The Romance Writers of America cite 16% of men read romance novels. "Many people today don’t realize that romance is more than a love story. Romance can be a complex plotline with a setting from the past in a remote, faraway place. Instead of focusing on a love story, it idealizes values and principles that seem lost in today’s world of technology and instant gratification. However, romance may also be a typical, romantic, love story that makes people sigh with wishful thinking". "Romance is a natural human emotion. Sad love songs and poems when one is recovering from a broken heart can help express unspoken feelings. Happy romantic movies and plays help people feel optimistic that someday they will also find true love. However, there is some criticism that many modern romantic stories make people develop unrealistic views about real relationships, as they expect love to be like it is in the movies".


title: Romance novel

text: The term "romance" is also applied to novels defined by Walter Scott as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvelous and uncommon incidents". Related to this type of romance novel are works that "involves a mysterious, adventurous, or spiritual story line where the focus is on a quest that involves bravery and strong values, not always a love interest". These romances frequently, but not exclusively, takes the form of the historical novel. Scott's novels are also frequently described as historical romances, and Northrop Frye suggested "the general principle that most 'historical novels' are romances".


title: Romance novel

text: A thriving genre of works conventionally referred to as "romance novels" existed in ancient Greece. Other precursors can be found in the literary fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries, including Samuel Richardson's sentimental novel "Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded" (1740) and the novels of Jane Austen. Austen inspired Georgette Heyer, the British author of historical romance set around the time Austen lived, as well as detective fiction. Heyer's first romance novel, "The Black Moth" (1921), was set in 1751.


title: Romance novel

text: The British company Mills & Boon began releasing romance novels for women in the 1930s. Their books were sold in North America by Harlequin Enterprises Ltd, which began direct marketing to readers and allowing mass-market merchandisers to carry the books.


title: Romance novel

text: An early American example of a mass-market romance was Kathleen E. Woodiwiss' "The Flame and the Flower" (1972), published by Avon Books. This was the first single-title romance novel to be published as an original paperback in the US, though in the UK the romance genre was long established through the works of Georgette Heyer, and from the 1950s Catherine Cookson, as well as others. Nancy Coffey was the senior editor who negotiated a multi-book deal with Woodiwiss. The genre boomed in the 1980s, with the addition of many different categories of romance and an increased number of single-title romances, but popular authors started pushing the boundaries of both the genre and plot, as well as creating more contemporary characters.


title: Romance novel

text: One definition of the word "romance" is: "the feelings and behavior of two people who are in a loving and sexual relationship with each other."


title: Romance novel

text: According to the Romance Writers of America, the main plot of a mass-market romance novel must revolve about the two people as they develop romantic love for each other and work to build a relationship. Both the conflict and the climax of the novel should be directly related to that core theme of developing a romantic relationship, although the novel can also contain subplots that do not specifically relate to the main characters' romantic love. Furthermore, a romance novel must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending."


title: Romance novel

text: Others, including Leslie Gelbman, a president of Berkley Books, define the genre more simply, stating only that a romance must make the "romantic relationship between the hero and the heroine ... the core of the book." In general, romance novels reward characters who are good people and penalize those who are evil, and a couple who fights for and believes in their relationship will likely be rewarded with unconditional love. Bestselling author Nora Roberts sums up the genre, saying: "The books are about the celebration of falling in love and emotion and commitment, and all of those things we really want." Women's fiction (including "chick lit") is not directly a subcategory of the romance novel genre, because in women's fiction the heroine's relationship with her family or friends may be as important as her relationship with the hero.


title: Romance novel

text: There is a lot of controversy among romance authors about what should and should not be included in plots of romance novels. Some romance novel authors and readers believe the genre has additional restrictions, from plot considerations (such as the protagonists' meeting early on in the story), to avoiding themes (such as adultery). Other disagreements have centered on the firm requirement for a happy ending; some readers admit stories without a happy ending, if the focus of the story is on the romantic love between the two main characters (e.g., "Romeo and Juliet"). While the majority of romance novels meet the stricter criteria, there are also many books widely considered to be romance novels that deviate from these rules. The Romance Writers of America's definition of romance novels includes only the focus on a developing romantic relationship and an optimistic ending. Escapism is important; an Avon executive observed that "The phone never rings, the baby never cries and the rent's never overdue in romances." There are many publishers, libraries, bookstores, and literary critics who continue to go by the traditional definition of romance to categorize books.


title: Romance novel

text: A romance novel can be set in any time period and in any location. In recent years, romance novels have even expanded into the galaxy. There are no specific restrictions on what can or cannot be included in a romance novel. Even controversial subjects are addressed in romance novels, including topics such as date rape, domestic violence, addiction, and disability. The combination of time frame, location, and plot elements does, however, help a novel to fit into one of several romance subgenres. Despite the numerous possibilities this framework allows, many people in the mainstream press claim that "all [romance novels] seem to read alike." Stereotypes of the romance genre abound. For instance, some believe that all romance novels are similar to those of Danielle Steel, featuring rich, glamorous people traveling to exotic locations. Many romance readers disagree that Steel writes romance at all, considering her novels more mainstream fiction.


title: Romance novel

text: Mass-market or formulaic romance novels are sometimes referred to as "smut" or female pornography, and are the most popular form of modern erotica for women. While some romance novels do contain more erotic acts, in other romance novels the characters do no more than kiss chastely. The romance genre runs the spectrum between these two extremes. Because women buy 90% of all romance novels, most romance novels are told from a woman's viewpoint, in either first or third person.


title: Romance novel

text: Although most romance novels are about heterosexual pairings, there are romance novels that deal with same-sex relationships, and some participants in the book industry characterize books dealing with same-sex relationships as F/F, and M/M.


title: Romance novel

text: "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë, "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy, "The Thorn Birds" by Colleen McCullough, "Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami, "Atonement" by Ian McEwan, and "The Song of Achilles" by Madeline Miller.


title: Romance novel

text: The genre of works of extended prose fiction dealing with romantic love existed in classical Greece. The titles of over twenty such ancient Greek romance novels are known, but most of them have only survived in an incomplete, fragmentary form. Only five ancient Greek romance novels have survived to the present day in a state of near-completion: "Chareas and Callirhoe", "Leucippe and Clitophon", "Daphnis and Chloe", "The Ephesian Tale", and "The Ethiopian Tale".


title: Romance novel

text: Precursors of the modern popular love-romance can also be found in the sentimental novel "Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded," by Samuel Richardson, published in 1740. "Pamela" was the first popular novel to be based on a courtship as told from the perspective of the heroine. Unlike many of the novels of the time, "Pamela" had a happy ending, when after Mr. B attempts unsuccessfully to seduce and rape Pamela multiple times, he eventually rewards her virtue by sincerely proposing an equitable marriage to her. The book was one of the first bestsellers, with five editions printed in the first eleven months of release. Richardson began writing "Pamela" as a book of letter templates. Richardson accepted the request, but only if the letters had a moral purpose. As Richardson was writing the series of letters turned into a story. Writing in a new form, the novel, Richardson attempted to both instruct and entertain. Richardson wrote "Pamela" as a conduct book, a sort of manual which codified social and domestic behavior of men, women, and servants, as well as a narrative in order to provide a more morally concerned literature option for young audiences. This conduct book genre has a long history.


title: Romance novel

text: Jane Austen is an important influence on romance genre fiction, and "Pride and Prejudice", published in 1813, has been called "the best romance novel ever written." In the early part of the Victorian era, the Brontë sisters, like Austen, wrote literary fiction that influenced later popular fiction. Charlotte Brontë in "Jane Eyre", published in 1847, introduced the orphaned heroine. Brontë's love romance incorporates elements of both the gothic novel and Elizabethan drama, and "demonstrate[s] the flexibility of the romance novel form."


title: Romance novel

text: While the literary fiction romance continued to develop in the 20th century, the new subgenre of genre fiction, which first developed in the 19th century, started to become more popular after the First World War. In 1919, E. M. Hull's novel "The Sheik" was published in the United Kingdom. The novel, which became hugely popular, was adapted into a movie (1921), which established star Rudolph Valentino as the top male actor of the time. The hero of this book was an iconic alpha male who kidnapped the heroine and won her admiration through his forceful actions. The novel was one of the first modern works to introduce the rape fantasy, a theme explored in Samuel Richardson's "Pamela" (1740). Although women were gaining more independence in life, publishers believed that readers would only accept premarital sex in the context of rape. In this novel and those that followed, the rape was depicted as more of a fantasy; the heroine is rarely if ever shown experiencing terror, stress, or trauma as a result.


title: Romance novel

text: The popular, mass market version of the historical romance, which Walter Scott developed in the early 19th century, is seen as beginning in 1921, when Georgette Heyer published "The Black Moth". This is set in 1751, but many of Heyer's novels were inspired by Jane Austen's novels and are set around the time Austen lived, in the later Regency period. Because Heyer's romances are set more than 100 years earlier, she includes carefully researched historical detail to help her readers understand the period. Unlike other popular love-romance novels of the time, Heyer's novels used the setting as a major plot device. Her characters often exhibit twentieth century sensibilities, and more conventional characters in the novels point out the heroine's eccentricities, such as wanting to marry for love. Heyer was a prolific author, and wrote one to two historical romance novels per year until her death in 1974.


title: Romance novel

text: In the 1930s, the British publishers Mills & Boon began releasing hardback romance novels. The books were sold through weekly two-penny libraries and were known as "the books in brown" for their brown binding. In the 1950s, the company began offering the books for sale through newsagents across the United Kingdom.


title: Romance novel

text: A Canadian company, Harlequin Enterprises, began distributing in North America in 1957 the category romances published by Mills & Boon. Mary Bonneycastle, wife of Harlequin founder Richard Bonneycastle, and her daughter, Judy Burgess, exercised editorial control over which Mills & Boon novels Harlequin reprinted. They had a "decency code," and rejected more sexually explicit material that Mills and Boon submitted for reprinting. Realizing that the genre was popular, Richard Bonneycastle finally decided to read a romance novel. He chose one of the more explicit novels and enjoyed it. On his orders, the company conducted a market test with the novel he had read and discovered that it outsold a similar, tamer novel. Overall, the novels were short and formulaic, featuring heroines who were sweet, compassionate, pure and innocent. The few heroines who worked did so in traditional female jobs, including as nurses, governesses and secretaries. Intimacy in the novels never extended beyond a chaste kiss between the protagonists.


title: Romance novel

text: On October 1, 1971, Harlequin purchased Mills & Boon. By this point, the romance novel genre "had been popularized and distributed widely to an enthusiastic audience" in Great Britain. In an attempt to duplicate Mills & Boon's success in North America, Harlequin improved their distribution and marketing system. By choosing to sell their books "where the women are," they allowed many mass-market merchandisers and even supermarkets to sell the books, all of which were exactly 192 pages. Harlequin then began a reader service, selling directly to readers who agreed to purchase a certain number of books each month.


title: Romance novel

text: In the US, modern romance genre fiction was born in 1972, with Avon's publication of Kathleen Woodiwiss' "The Flame and the Flower", which was the first of the modern "bodice ripper" romance novels to follow "the principals into the bedroom." Aside from its content, the book was revolutionary in that it was one of the first single-title romance novels to be published as an original paperback, rather than being first published in hardcover, and, like the category romances, was distributed in drug stores and other mass-market merchandising outlets. The novel went on to sell 2.35 million copies. Avon followed its release with the 1974 publication of Woodiwiss' second novel, "The Wolf and the Dove" and two more sexually graphic novels by newcomer Rosemary Rogers, "Sweet Savage Love" and "Dark Fires". The latter sold two million copies in its first three months of release. By 1975, "Publishers Weekly" had reported that the "Avon originals" had sold a combined . The following year over 150 historical romance novels, many of them paperback originals, were published, selling over .


title: Romance novel

text: The success of these novels prompted a new style of writing romance, concentrating primarily on historical fiction tracking the monogamous relationship between a helpless heroine and the hero who rescued her, even if he had been the one to place her in danger. The covers of these novels tended to feature scantily clad women being grabbed by the hero, and caused the novels to be referred to as bodice rippers. A "Wall Street Journal" article in 1980 referred to these bodice rippers as "publishing's answer to the Big Mac: They are juicy, cheap, predictable, and devoured in stupefying quantities by legions of loyal fans." The term "bodice ripper" is now considered offensive to many in the romance industry.


title: Romance novel

text: In this new style of historical romance, heroines were independent and strong-willed and were often paired with heroes who evolved into caring and compassionate men who truly admired the women they loved. This was in contrast to the contemporary romances published during this time, which were often characterized by weak females who fell in love with overbearing alpha males. Although these heroines had active roles in the plot, they were "passive in relationships with the heroes." Across the genre, heroines during this time were usually aged 16–21, with the heroes slightly older, usually around 30. The women were virgins, while the men were not, and both members of the couple were described as beautiful.


title: Romance novel

text: Category romance lines were slower to react to some of the changes that had swept the historical romance subgenre. Despite the fact that the former Mills & Boon lines were now owned by a North American company, the lines did not have any American writers until 1975, when Harlequin purchased a novel by Janet Dailey. Dailey's novels provided the romance genre's "first look at heroines, heroes and courtships that take place in America, with American sensibilities, assumptions, history, and most of all, settings." Harlequin was unsure how the market would react to this new type of romance, and was unwilling to fully embrace it. In the late 1970s, a Harlequin editor rejected a manuscript by Nora Roberts, who has since become the top-selling romance author, because "they already had their American writer."


title: Romance novel

text: Harlequin sold almost $70 million of its paperback romances in 1979 through 100,000 supermarkets and other stores, giving the company almost 10% of the market for paperback books. That year the company began distributing its own books in the United States instead of through Simon & Schuster's Pocket Books. In 1980 Simon & Schuster formed Silhouette Books to publish its own romance novels, beginning what "The New York Times" called "perhaps the most bitter war in American book publishing history." The company sought to take advantage of the untapped talent of the American writers. They published several lines of category romance, and encouraged their writers to create stronger heroines and less dominant heroes. Authors were also expected to address contemporary issues where appropriate. Silhouette soon saw their market share expand, and in 1984, Harlequin acquired them. Despite the acquisition, Silhouette continued to retain editorial control and to publish various lines under their own imprint.


title: Romance novel

text: Harlequin had also failed to adapt quickly to the signs that readers appreciated novels with more explicit sex scenes, and in 1980, several publishers entered the category romance market to fill that gap. That year, Dell launched their Candlelight Ecstasy line with Amii Lorin's "The Tawny Gold Man", becoming the first line to waive the requirement that heroines be virgins. By the end of 1983 sales for the Candlelight Ecstasy line totaled $30 million. Silhoeutte also launched similar lines, Desire (sexually explicit) and Special Edition (sexually explicit and longer stories, up to 250 pages), each of which had a 90–100% sellout rate each month.


title: Romance novel

text: A 1982 survey of romance readers confirmed that the new styles of writing were attracting new readers to the genre. 35% of the readers surveyed had begun reading romances after 1977. An additional 31% of those surveyed had been readers for between 6 and 10 years, meaning they had become interested in the genre after 1972, when Woodiwiss' revolutionary novel was published. This means that two-thirds of those surveyed joined the genre after it had begun to change.


title: Romance novel

text: The number of category romance lines increased at a rapid pace, and by 1985 there were 16 separate lines producing a total of 80 novels per month. The sudden increase in category romance lines meant an equally sudden increase in demand for writers of the new style of romance novel. This tight market caused a proportionate decrease in the quality of the novels that were being released. By 1984, the market was saturated with category lines and readers had begun to complain of redundancy in plots. The following year, the "dampening effect of the high level of redundancy associated with series romances was evident in the decreased number of titles being read per month." Harlequin's return rate, which had been less than 25% in 1978, when it was the primary provider of category romance, swelled to 60%.


title: Romance novel

text: The genre continued to expand in the mid-to-late 1980s, as publishers realized that the more popular authors were often those who stretched the boundaries of the genre. A 1984 novel by LaVyrle Spencer featured an overweight, middle-aged hero who had to make drastic changes to his lifestyle to win the heroine, while a 1987 Dailey novel involved an ugly hero and a heroine who was searching for her birth mother. Jayne Ann Krentz's 1986 novel "Sweet Starfire" became the first futuristic romance, combining elements of traditional romance novels and science fiction. The relationships had also modernized: by the 1990s, it was rare to see a book that featured a man raping his future wife.


title: Romance novel

text: In the mid-to-late 1980s, contemporary romances began to feature women in more male-dominated jobs, such as offshore oil rigs and the space program. The age range of heroines also began to expand, so that books began to feature women who had already reached 30 and even 40. Heroes also changed, with some authors veering towards a more sensitive man. Despite the broadening of some aspects of the plot, other taboos remained, and publishers discouraged authors from writing about controversial subjects such as terrorism, warfare, and masculine sports. Romance novels began to contain more humor beginning in the 1990s, as Julie Garwood began introducing a great deal of humor into her historical romances.


title: Romance novel

text: The romance novel began to expand in other ways as well. In 1989, author Jude Deveraux became the first romance author to transition from writing original mass market paperbacks to being published in hardcover. Her novel, "A Knight in Shining Armor", "became a natural bestseller." Several authors found success writing single-title romances set in contemporary times, and publishing houses began to encourage the growth in the genre. Because the novels were set in modern times, they could include more of the elements that modern women could relate to, and soon began to touch on themes such as single parenthood, adoption, and abuse.


title: Romance novel

text: The 21st century brought additional changes to the genre that included diversifying main characters and plots to incorporate identities that had not previously been represented.


title: Romance novel

text: Scholars of romance novel history have observed that characters with disabilities have been largely underrepresented in mainstream media, including romance novels. By the early 2000s, though, more books in the romance genre featured heroes and heroines with physical and mental impairments. Mary Balogh's "Simply Love", published in 2006, features a hero with facial scarring and nerve damage who overcomes fears of rejection due to his physical appearance to enter a romantic relationship and family unit by the end of the novel. This was a substantial shift from past narratives where disabled characters were "de-eroticized" and not given storylines that included sex or romantic love.


title: Romance novel

text: Additionally, characters with autism have gained more representation in the romance genre since the turn of the century. The year 2010 saw Christine Feehan's novel, "Water Bound", featuring a heroine with autism as a significant plot point including a detailed and compassionate portrayal of living and coping with autism. Helen Hoang's 2018 novel "The Kiss Quotient", for example, focuses on the heroine's Asperger's syndrome. However, it is still rare to find romance novels in which there are characters with cognitive disabilities, and they are most likely to be included as secondary characters.


title: Romance novel

text: Since the 1980s, many plot lines that were once thought to be taboo by the romance publishing industry have become much more accepted into the mainstream of romance fiction. For example, in the 20th century it was rare to find a book with a hero who was in the military or professional sports. In the 21st century, however, such characters are relatively common and even have their own sub-genres within the romance category.


title: Romance novel

text: By 2000, the covers had begun to evolve from featuring a scantily clad couple to showing a view of the landscape featured in the novel.


title: Romance novel

text: In the earliest Harlequin romance novels, heroines were typically nurses and secretaries, but as time has passed and women have entered the workforce in larger numbers, romance heroines have spanned the career spectrum. Modern romance novels now feature more balanced relationships between men and women.


title: Romance novel

text: Some important literary figures received critical acclaim for their romance novels. For instance, the Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez received critical praise for his romance novel "Love in the Time of Cholera".


title: Romance novel

text: Arthur Schopenhauer held that, if poets and novelists across continents have not stopped producing romance novels since millennials, it is because no other topic is more relevant and so the theme never gets old. According to Schopenhauer, romance/love is more important than other topics because it affects the species (not only the individual), in the sense that romance and partner choice is generally a prerequisite to have offspring and continue maintaining the human species in future generations of humankind.


title: Romance novel

text: Despite recent rehabilitation and merging of the genre with other genres, there is sometimes a negative stigma with the romance novel. Some dedicated readers are embarrassed to admit to buying or even reading the books. The romance genre has sometimes generated criticism. Some critics point to a lack of suspense, as it may seem obvious that the hero and heroine will eventually resolve their issues, and wonder whether it is beneficial "for women to be whiling away so many hours reading impossibly glamorized love stories." According to fiction author Melissa Pritchard, a romance novel "perpetuates something slightly dangerous, that there's this notion, that there's this perfect love out there, and it can distract you from the work of loving yourself."


title: Romance novel

text: Romance novelists attribute the stigma to the fact that romance is, according to some, a genre "written almost exclusively by women for women." Romance novelist Jennifer Crusie counters that in the modern romance novel "a woman is rewarded with unconditional love [only] if she remains true to herself," while novelist Susan Elizabeth Phillips believes that romance novels are popular because the heroine typically wins, sometimes overcoming great odds so that she is no longer a victim.


title: Romance novel

text: Romance novels are divided into two sub-sets, category romances, also known as series romances, and single title romances. Many authors write only within one of the formats, but others, including Jennifer Crusie and Jayne Ann Krentz, have achieved success in both formats.


title: Romance novel

text: Category romances are short, usually no more than 200 pages, or about 55,000 words. The books are published in clearly delineated lines, with a certain number of books published in each line every month. In many cases, the books are numbered sequentially within the line. These novels have widespread distribution—often worldwide—and a single U.S. print run, remaining on a bookseller's shelves until they are sold out or until the next month's titles are released and take their place. Writers for the largest publisher of category romance, Harlequin/Mills & Boon, can find their novels translated into 26 languages and sold in over 100 international markets.


title: Romance novel

text: To write a successful novel of this length, the "author must pare the story down to its essentials. Subplots and minor characters are eliminated or relegated to the backstory." Nonetheless, category romance lines each have a distinct identity, which may involve similar settings, characters, time periods, levels of sensuality, or types of conflict. Publishers of category romances usually issue guidelines for each line, specifying the elements necessary for a novel to be included in each line. Depending on the current market and perceived reader preferences, publishers frequently begin new lines or end existing ones. Most recently, erotic and Christian lines have been introduced while traditional Regency romance lines have ended.


title: Romance novel

text: Single-titles novels are romance novels not published as part of a publisher's category. They are longer than category romances, typically between 350 and 400 pages, or 100,000-110,000 words. Publishers may release the novels over a shorter period of time for sales and publicity reasons, but on average authors write 1.5 novels per year and have one each year published. Single-title novels remain on the booksellers' shelves at the discretion of the store.


title: Romance novel

text: Despite their name, single-title novels are not always stand alone novels. Some authors prefer to write several interconnected books, ranging in number from trilogies to long-running series, so that they can revisit characters or worlds. Such sets of books often have similar titles, and may be labelled as "Number 1 in the XXX Series", but they are not considered series romances because they are not part of a particular line.


title: Romance novel

text: Because the definition of a romance novel does not limit the types of plot devices, time frames, or locations that can be included, the genre has grown to encompass a wide variety of material and spawned multiple subgenres. Subgenres of romance are often closely related to other literature genres, and some books could be considered a romance subgenre novel and another genre novel at the same time. For example, romantic suspense novels are often similar to mysteries, crime fiction and thrillers, and paranormal romances use elements popular in science fiction and fantasy novels.


title: Romance novel

text: Contemporary romance, which is set after World War II, is often what people mean when they refer to a romance novel. Contemporary romance novels—the largest subgenre—are set in the time when they are written, and usually reflect the mores of that time. Heroines in contemporary romances prior to 1970 usually quit working when they marry or have children—while heroines after 1970 usually have, and keep, a career. As contemporary romance novels have grown to contain more complex plotting and more realistic characters, the line between this subgenre and the genre of women's fiction has blurred.


title: Romance novel

text: Most contemporary romance novels contain elements that date the books. The majority of them eventually become irrelevant to more modern readers and go out of print. Those that survive the test of time, such as Jane Austen's work, are often reclassified as historical romances.


title: Romance novel

text: Over half of the romantic fiction published in the United States in 2004 (1,468 out of 2,285 books) were contemporary romance novels. Contemporary romance novels have twice been chosen by Kelly Ripa to be featured in her Reading with Ripa book club.


title: Romance novel

text: Historical romance, also known as historical novel, is a broad category of fiction which the plot takes place in a setting located in the past, which Walter Scott helped popularize in the early 19th century, with works such as "Rob Roy" and "Ivanhoe". Literary fiction historical romances continue to be published, and a notable recent example is "Wolf Hall" (2009), a multi-award-winning novel by English historical novelist Hilary Mantel. However, the focus here is on the mass-market genre.


title: Romance novel

text: This subgenre includes a wide variety of other subgenres, including Regency romance. Mass-market historical romance novels are rarely published in hardcover, with fewer than 15 receiving that status each year, less than one-fifth of the number of contemporary romance novels published in that format. Because historical romances are primarily published in mass-market format, their fortunes are tied to a certain extent to the mass-market trends. Booksellers and large merchandisers now sell fewer mass market paperbacks, preferring trade paperbacks or hardcovers, which prevents historical romances from being sold in some price clubs and other mass merchandise outlets.


title: Romance novel

text: In 2001, 778 mass-market historical romances were published, a 10-year high. By 2004, the annual number had dropped to 486, which was still 20% of all romance novels published. Kensington Books says they receive fewer submissions of historical novels, and their previously published authors have switched to contemporary.


title: Romance novel

text: Romantic suspense involves an intrigue or mystery for the protagonists to solve. Typically, however, the heroine is the victim of a crime or attempted crime, and works with a hero, who tends to be in a field where he would serve as a protector, such as a police officer, FBI agent, bodyguard, or Navy SEAL. By the end of the novel, the mystery is resolved and the interaction between the hero and heroine has evolved into a solid relationship. These novels primarily take place in contemporary times, but authors such as Amanda Quick have broadened the genre to also include historical timeframes.


title: Romance novel

text: Like all romances, romantic suspense novels must place the development of a relationship between the protagonists at the heart of the story. The relationship "must impact each decision they make and increase the tension of the suspense as it propel the story. In turn, the events of suspense must also directly affect the relationship and move the story forward." Romantic suspense novels tend to have more "clean" language, without the "emotional, intimate" descriptions often used in more traditional romances. Because the mystery is a crucial aspect of the plot, these novels are more plot-driven instead of character-driven.


title: Romance novel

text: This blend of the romance and mystery was perfected by Mary Stewart, who wrote ten romantic suspense novels between 1955 and 1967. Stewart was one of the first to seamlessly combine the two genres, maintaining a full mystery while focusing on the courtship between two people. In her novels, the process of solving the mystery "helps to illuminate" the hero's personality, helping the heroine to fall in love with him.


title: Romance novel

text: Paranormal romance blends the real with the fantastic or science fictional. The fantastic elements may be woven into an alternate version of our own world in an urban fantasy involving vampires, werewolves, and/or demons, or they may be more "normal" manifestations of the paranormal—humans with psychic abilities, witches, or ghosts. Time travel, futuristic, and extraterrestrial romances also fall beneath the paranormal umbrella.


title: Romance novel

text: These novels often blend elements of other subgenres—including suspense, mystery, or chick lit—with their fantastic themes. A few paranormal romances are set solely in the past and are structured much like any historical romance novel. Others are set in the future, sometimes on different worlds. Still others have a time travel element with either the hero or the heroine traveling into the past or the future. Between 2002 and 2004, the number of paranormal romances published in the United States doubled to 170 per year. A popular title in the genre can sell over 500,000 copies.


title: Romance novel

text: Many paranormal romances rely on the blend of contemporary American life with the existence of supernatural or magically empowered beings, human or otherwise. Sometimes the larger culture is aware of the magical in its midst; sometimes it is not. Some paranormal romances focus less on the specifics of their alternate worlds than do traditional science fiction or fantasy novels, keeping the attention strongly on the underlying romance. Others develop the alternate reality meticulously, combining well-planned magical systems and inhuman cultures with contemporary reality.


title: Romance novel

text: These books (time travel, fantasy, science fiction, and futuristic) blend romance with fantasy or science fiction, and they often overlap the paranormal subgenre. While exploring their alternate worlds, they also offer a fully developed romance. The sensuality level in these novels varies from chaste to very sexy.


title: Romance novel

text: Over the years, many publishers have included futuristic, fantasy, and science-fiction romances in their contemporary series lines (for example, Harlequin Temptation, Harlequin Superromance, Silhouette Special Edition). Today these romances are published by most major publishers, including Berkley Books, Harlequin's LUNA and MIRA, Pocket Books, Kensington Books, Dorchester Publishing, Avon Books, and NAL. The e-Book publisher Ellora's Cave has published many erotic romances with fantasy themes and other-worldly heroes and heroines.


title: Romance novel

text: There is overlap in these subgenres. Steampunk is science fiction mixed with alternate history which takes place during the Victorian era. It mixes historical elements with technology (think of the television series "The Wild Wild West" (1965–1969)). Authors to check out include M. K. Hobson and Gail Dayton.


title: Romance novel

text: The first futuristic romance to be marketed by a mainstream romance publisher, Jayne Ann Krentz's "Sweet Starfire", was published in 1986 and was a "classic road trip romance" that just happened to be set in a separate galaxy. This genre has become more popular since 2000. Krentz attributes the popularity of this romance genre to the fact that the novels "are, at heart, classic historical romances that just happen to be set on other worlds."


title: Romance novel

text: Fantasy romance, also known as romantic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy fiction, describing a fantasy story using many of the elements and conventions of the romance genre. Romantic fantasy has been published by both fantasy and romance lines, with some publishers distinguishing between "fantasy romance" being more like a contemporary fantasy novel with romantic elements, and "romantic fantasy" with more emphasis on the romance elements of the story.


title: Romance novel

text: Time-travel romances are a version of the classic "fish out of water" story. In most, the heroine is from the present day and travels into the past to meet the hero. In a smaller subset of these novels, the hero, who lives in the past, travels forward into his future to meet the heroine. A successful time-travel romance must have the characters react logically to their experience and should investigate some of the differences, both physical and mental, between the world the character normally inhabits and the one where they landed. Some writers end their novels with the protagonists trapped in different time periods and unable to be together—to the displeasure of many readers of the genre.


title: Romance novel

text: Inspirational romance, as the market exists today, combines explicitly Christian themes with the development of a romantic relationship. In 2004, 167 novels were published in the inspirational romance subgenre. These novels typically do not include gratuitous violence or swearing, and the central courtship is chaste. Sex, if it is present at all, occurs after marriage and is not explicitly detailed. Many novels in this genre also focus on the hero or heroine's faith, turning the love story into "a triangle: the man and the woman and also their relationship with God." Themes such as forgiveness, honesty, and fidelity are common.


title: Romance novel

text: The first line of series inspirational romances debuted shortly after the 1980 U.S. presidential election, when Silhouette launched their Silhouette Inspirations line. The books were aimed at born-again Christians and were marketed in religious bookstores. The Silhouette Inspirations line was closed after Harlequin acquired Silhouette in 1984 because it was not profitable. However, other Christian publishers continued to produce romance novels, including historical and contemporary, and Harlequin later rejoined the market with the 1998 launch of its Steeple Hill and Love Inspired lines.


title: Romance novel

text: Young adult romance are romance novels where young adult life is centered. The subgenre is believed to have been started in 1942, with varying degrees of popularity throughout time. The romance between two characters is the central focus of the book, however other aspects of young adult/teen life are also explored, often with coming-of-age themes and navigating relationships. While most romance ends with "happily ever after," "happily for now" is generally accepted due to the age of characters.


title: Romance novel

text: Young adult romance has its own subgenres which include contemporary, fantasy, sci-fi, LGBTQIA+, and more.