"Harlequin Mills & Boon in India: From the ‘Colonial Library’ to Marketing to Modern Indian Readers"

In the early twentieth century, most British publishing firms had what was termed a “colonial library,” which was not a physical space but rather a list of the books the publisher had decided to produce, sell, and distribute to colonial markets. This paper explores the impact of the publishing firm Mills & Boon’s (M&B) early 20th-century colonial library in India. Founded in 1908, M&B distributed popular romance novels to colonial territories and established a strong brand identity among English readers that still exists today. Once Mills & Boon was acquired by Harlequin Enterprises, Harlequin Mills & Boon (HMB) built upon the strength of the Mills & Boon brand in the English-reading Indian market and later established an office in Mumbai. By 2008, HMB’s branch in Mumbai offered popular romance novels written by Indian authors for an Indian readership. What can HMB’s negotiation of this national market reveal about the demands of a new generation of readers in India? And what are the challenges of shifting from importing content to commissioning local content from Indian writers? Research was conducted at the M&B archive at the University of Reading, England, and at the Paul Grescoe archive at the University of Calgary, Canada. Newspapers, trade publications, and recent scholarship on the history of book publishing are also used to provide a context to understand the progression and development of HMB’s marketing and promotional strategies.
*Research to be presented as “in progress”