O Kiss Me, Kate

From Wikipedia: Harlequin Enterprises Limited is a Toronto, Ontario-based company that is a publisher of series romance and women's fiction. Owned by the Torstar Corporation, the largest newspaper publisher in Canada, the company publishes approximately 120 new titles each month in 29 different languages in 107 international markets on six continents. These books are written by over 1,300 authors worldwide, offering readers a broad range of fiction including romance, psychological thrillers and relationship novels. The company reported sales of 131 million books in 2006--half overseas and 96% outside of Canada. ~~~ In 1953 Harlequin began to publish medical romances. When the company's chief editor died the following year, Bonnycastle's wife, Mary, took over his duties. Mary Bonnycastle enjoyed reading the romances of British publisher Mills and Boon, and, at her urging, in 1957 Harlequin acquired the North American distribution rights to the category romance novels which had been published by Mills and Boon in the Commonwealth of Nations. The first Mills and Boon novel to be reprinted by Harlequin was Anne Vinton's The Hospital in Buwambo (MB No 407). ~~~ The contract with Mills and Boon was based solely on a handshake, given each year when Bonnycastle visited London. He would lunch at the Ritz Hotel with Alan Boon, the son of a Mills and Boon founder, and the two would informally agree to extend their business agreement for an additional year. ~~~ Mary Bonnycastle and her daughter Judy Burgess exercised editorial control over which Mills and Boon novels were reprinted by Harlequin. They had a "decency code" and rejected more sexually explicit material that Mills and Boon submitted for reprinting. Upon realizing that the genre was popular, Richard Bonnycastle 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...


Genre: Romance