I began reading romance in the mid-60′s… Mary Stewart, Phyllis A. Whitney, Barbara Cartland, Georgette Heyer. Most of these authors I still re-read today. But some authors of that time are too (unintentionally) accurate to the gender bias and limitations of the era … writers like Betty Neels, whose books I loved passionately at the time.

I think that Ms. Neels’ and others of the mid 20th Century accurately portrayed society at the time… with heroines with limited career and life options whose success as women depended on marraige to successful men. These, to me, are more like Austen’s then-contemporary, now historical novels.

In the early 80′s the romance genre exploded… with authors like Carla Neggers, Linda Howard, Heather Graham, Nora Roberts, Debbie Macomber, Joanne Ross, Iris Johansen, Jayne Ann Krentz, Linda Lael Miller, Barbara Delinsky. And they, along with a few earlier authors like Diana Palmer, Fern Micheals, Anne Stuart, Catherine Coulter, have been much better at changing their plots and heros and heroines to reflect changing social mores and contemporary themes. But then by 1985 women had a lot more options overall and the novels began to reflect this. So, Linniegayle… I agree…I’m not ready for romances set much before 1990!

I would like to know how some of these authors with long, successful careers would categorize their early work! I’m fairly certain most would go with the “when written as contemporary, always contemporary”.

I first began reading regencies in the 60′s because the heroines often overcame the biases of the time to find happiness. Their audacity may not have been historically accurate, but it was a darn-site more hopeful!
The biases of the mid-century contemporaries are simply too painful.

-maggie j

Last year, I read “Message From Absalom,” a Cold War-era romantic suspense published in the early/mid 1970s. The hero is a Russian KGB agent, everyone smokes, and it’s full of references to womens’ lib, etc., yet it didn’t feel anymore dated than your average historical romance. The author painted a vivid picture of that time, and characters that fit it beautifully. I think that sense of time and place is what sets a so-called modern historical apart from a dated contemporary.

I guess we’ll all shelve books where they make sense to each of us. For me, anything written after WWII, or at least after 1960, feels more contemporary than historical. But for those born later, especially in the 80s and 90s like my own children, the game-changing 60′s and the cold war are definitely history.

I hadn’t thought in the terms of a writer writing a historical as opposed to someone writing about their own place and time in what is now history.

I’m not afraid to list things as historical because I studied history and even though WWII should still be fresh in our memories it was classified as historical when I was in university 20 years ago. So to me, anything set in WWII I would call a historical even if the writer wrote the book in 1944. The piece itself is historical and would be something we call a primary source of information. As a historian these are true artifacts of the time and have value as a source of information.

So if the writer was alive in 1960 but wrote about the 1920′s would that have been considered historical fiction? I know it would not be a primary source of information for historians but it can help them understand the thoughts, feelings of people in 1960 towards their own history.

Yep, I’m now confused. I knew that was going to happen. I’m suddenly in the chicken or the egg predicament.

CindyS

I suppose to me contemporary romances are those written by authors in the time they are set. But someone reading that book set in the past would consider it historical.

Lots of theories provided above by others and they all make sense. I guess it’s a subject that doesn’t have a clear answer.

And then, over an amazingly brief period of time, that whole issue essentially DISAPPEARED, and a terrifying book became a well-writeen thriller with no current application. Boom. It was over.

There’s no longer a chance that a serial killer is learning all about your family, your home, your pets, everything about you, because he works in a lab that … processes your home movies.