Charlotte Lamb (almost) in the rain

I found this old photograph of my mother a few days ago, when clearing out some drawers. Not sure when or even where it was taken, but it's obviously quite an early one compared to the other photographs of Charlotte Lamb that I have in my possession.

It's clearly a city. The cars look - to my eyes, at least - American, though that could just be the late Seventies look of the thing. Which would date it to her major US and Canadian tour, organised by Harlequin, that took place circa 1981. (I did actually accompany her on the Harlequin tour, but can't recall if I was 14 or 15 that year.)

Certainly, from the cars, the clothes and my mother's general appearance, I'm guessing this photograph was taken no later than 1982 or maybe 1983.

But who's holding the umbrella?!

Dark Dominion: the Alpha male run amok?

Dark Dominion by Charlotte Lamb was first published by Mills & Boon in 1979, though it's been reprinted in various formats and by other publishers since. The basic plot: Caroline Fox has to decide between James, the forbidding but darkly charismatic barrister she married, and fun sexy Jake, a famous actor she's known since their days at drama school together, who comes back into her life at a time of crisis in her marriage - the crisis having been precipitated by a miscarriage.

I re-read Dark Dominion last week, and was both pleasantly surprised by how gripping and un-put-downable I found it, despite the 1979 publication date, and shocked by how grim this book becomes at times. The story deals with some extremely difficult issues such as separation, rape, potential divorce, depression, miscarriage, adultery, and does not shy away from telling it 'like it is'.

Dark Dominion's genuinely dark heart made me begin to question my mother's take on the Alpha male, something I'd never really done before, perhaps having imagined in my youth that her version of the Alpha male - nearly always a hard-edged, highly driven individual whose courtship of the heroine is as much about sadism as it is about hearts and flowers - was merely a product of her times, and the specific romance genre in which she was writing.

But was it?

Thirty years on, and Kate Walker's recent blog posts on the topic of the Alpha male in category romance certainly demonstrate that times - and our expectations of romantic heroes - have changed.

Today's Alpha male may be hard-edged, but he is neither a bully nor suspect in his sexual tastes. Gone is the truly sadistic growl, the punishing kiss, the retaliatory slap - oh yes, the hero got away with hitting the heroine in a number of Lamb stories, such as Pagan Encounter and Retribution, off the top of my head - and other such dangerous delights.

I remember distinctly a key scene in the superb Call Back Yesterday, where the heroine points a rifle at the hero at point blank range, and he huskily orders her to pull the trigger, because only such an ultimate act of violence could finish what was between them. Thrilling to read, when bound up in the magic of the story, and perfect for their particular relationship. But politically correct? Absolutely not!

Dark Dominion is a hard story to read at times, yet it sparkles with romance when the sexy, drawling, Beta hero Jake is on the scene. You almost wish Jake could win his lady. But of course his lady, in this case, is already married. And that marriage triumphs in the end, because Caroline 'needs' and responds to the darkness in James' character - or so she claims:

Sweat glistened on his pale temples and dewed his back. His hands bruised and explored, their touch rough. He was taking her ruthlessly, without tenderness, but her anxiety and anger was being released into a wild, frenzied response which seemed to incite him into more and more brutal lovemaking. She knew instinctively that she needed it, that some deeply buried instinct was making her not merely accept but want the savagery of his body.

Note: After this particular scene, James insists that she leave him, because he finally recognises that his jealousy is out of control.

Someone once left a comment on this blog criticising some of Charlotte Lamb's early books as sadistic and unpleasant. I thought at the time that this critique was unfair. I am no longer quite so sure. However, that is not to say that I disapprove of these darker Lamb stories, or feel they ought not to have been written. They were immensely popular at the time of publication, and still make dynamic reading. Which suggests that they answered some kind of need in the mind of the reader, just as James' fierce lovemaking above answers a similar, unspoken need in Caroline.

So perhaps such difficult themes do speak to something in a woman's psyche, such as a secret need to be dominated - if only in the bedroom. And while that is no longer a politically correct attitude, and rightly so in most cases, there may come a day when such dangerous thoughts are back in fashion.

Until then, romantic novelists will have to comb a recalcitrant hero's hair and keep him just the right side of civilised.

"Musings on Romantic Fiction from an Academic Perspective"

Gosh, I'm really not very good at updating this site, am I? November 2008 was my last post and here we are in April 2009. I ought to be ashamed of myself.

Well, I was rooting about on the internet today and found a great blog called Teach Me Tonight: Musings on Romantic Fiction from an Academic Perspective, which last year featured this informative and well-judged article about Charlotte Lamb, and in particular, one of her more boundary-pushing novels, Hot Blood ... where the heroine is 52 years old!

It's an interesting read, and I recommend clicking over there. But don't stop at the post itself, because the comments below the blog post are equally fascinating and informative, especially if you're researching Charlotte Lamb or romance novels of the eighties and nineties.

The article also discusses an unusual topic: the age of heroines compared to the age of romance authors themselves, and asks why so many heroines seem 'older' than their apparent ages in the books. The newer romance line Modern Heat is also mentioned, seen by the blogger as one attempt to draw in a younger readership.

By the way, if you've spotted any other blog or website articles on Lamb, or would like to write one yourself and have it mentioned here, please do comment below. Frankly, I need all the help I can get!

Mills and Boon Celebrates 100th Anniversary

An excellent, I thought, programme last night on BBC Four celebrating Mills and Boon's 100th Anniversary. For a few more days you can watch it again at this link: BBC FOUR.

I was a little disappointed that nobody contacted me back about this celebration, as I know some past authors - or their estates - were involved in the 100th Anniversary. But although a few of my mother's books featured in the various programmes shown last night on the BBC, that was as far as her involvement went. Which is a disappointment, given her massive role in creating the modern face of Mills and Boon.

There was also the BBC Four documentary programme detailed below, "How To Write a Mills and Boon Novel", following the progress of novelist Stella Duffy as she attempts to write an M&B and discovers along the way that it ain't as easy as it might appear!

What amused me was how Duffy's natural instincts as a writer had her breaking and subverting the M&B paradigm as soon as she began to sketch out her initial plot, and that she then went on to produce a treatment for the more unusual M&B imprint, Nocturne, which features supernatural stories, rather than the traditional Modern Romance line she'd been originally pitching for.

How to Write a Mills and Boon:...
...Timeshift

To mark 100 years of romance publishers Mills and Boon, literary novelist Stella Duffy takes on the challenge of writing for them. Romantic fiction is a global phenomenon, and Mills and Boon are among the biggest names in the business. The company welcomes submissions from new authors, but as Duffy soon finds out, writing a Mills and Boon is harder than it looks.

Help is at hand from the publishers themselves, a prolific Mills and Boon author and some avid romance fans, as Duffy's quest to create the perfect romantic novel takes her from London to Italy on a journey that is both an insight into the art of romantic fiction and the joy and frustration of writing itself.

Fan Mail from "Sandy"

I feel like it's Christmas. :-)

I've been reading your mom's books ever since I was 14 or 15 (and I'm 45 now!). The first one I read was "The Long Surrender", and from then on I was hooked.

My favorites:

Obsession (my original copy has pages falling out!)
Frustration
Temptation
Forbidden Fire
Stranger in the Night

That's a very short list, but if I listed all of them, it would be about 25 books!!!

Thanks very much for bringing your mom to life in your blog. I'm sure you must miss her very much even now.

Take care,

-Sandy-

Charlotte Lamb's Influences

Some people have asked about Charlotte Lamb's influences as a writer. I can't be comprehensive here, not without researching the question at length, but I shall attempt to answer that briefly by outlining a number of her favourite authors and books.

First, it's important to note that Charlotte Lamb's library was extensive, to the tune of many thousands of books accumulated over nearly five decades of voracious reading. So any comments I make here can only be very general in nature, and some equally important influences may either not be mentioned at all or glossed over. Indeed, I may access more information on this topic and return to it in a future blog entry. Anyone researching twentieth-century romantic novelists and their influences is welcome to approach me by email for a more detailed picture of my mother's reading habits.

In her early days as a novelist, before her all-important shift from Robert Hale to Mills & Boon, her books tended to be more historical than romantic. That blurring of the line between the two genres came from having cut her teeth on the likes of Mary Stewart, Mary Renault - an Essex-born author like Charlotte Lamb herself - and Jean Plaidy (herself the user of multiple pseudonyms such as Eleanor Burford, Victoria Holt and Philippa Carr), all of whom were equally interested in maintaining complete accuracy of historical detail whilst still honouring the romantic element of their plots.

The light Regency romances of Georgette Heyer also held a special place in her heart, Sylvester and Venetia being firm favourites. Several of Heyer's non-Regency historicals were also to be found on her most-accessed shelves - The Conquerer, for instance, and Beauvallet. The influence of Heyer's swift intellectual banter between hero and heroine can be seen at work in almost all Lamb's novels, though perhaps especially at her peak in the 1980s.

Before even that, as a teenager, she had enjoyed steeping herself in the work of nineteenth-century novelists - primarily 'character-driven' writers like Charles Dickens with his rich, eccentrically-peopled novels. Jane Austen was another constant presence on her bedside table. In later years, she loved to listen to classic audio books on her 'Walkman': she owned the entire Austen oeuvre on cassette. Although she loved them all, Emma, I believe, took precedence for her over the more popular Pride and Prejudice. It should be noted that her knowledge of such writers and their works was encyclopedic; her grasp of literary traditions was formidable and far beyond what might be deemed necessary for a career as a romantic novelist.

Favourite twentieth-century authors included Graham Greene, in whose work and biography she was particularly interested, and later crime writers such as Ellis Peters and Ruth Rendell. Her non-fiction tastes lay in gardening and cookery books - interests which often worked their way noticeably into her novels - and more extensively in the field of biography (usually that of other novelists and poets, but also charismatic historical figures like Napoleon, about whom she wrote as Sheila Lancaster in a 1982 novel, Mistress of Fortune).

Of the poets, John Keats and William Blake were perennial favourites. She had a keen interest in poetry, even writing a little unpublished verse herself. Well-read in the works of British and American poets, from the medieval Chaucer through to T.S. Eliot and Stevie Smith, her tastes nevertheless tended toward the conventional and romantic, especially in later life, and away from anything either emotionally excessive - such as the confessional poets - or overly-modernist.

I have not mentioned Shakespeare here so far, but his voice was a constant influence over Lamb from her earliest short stories published in women's periodicals of the 1970s through to her last works. She regularly quoted from his plays and sonnets in her novels, and displayed a profound knowledge of his life and work - and indeed that of other dramatists through the ages - when writing specifically about actors or the stage in her novels. Again as Sheila Lancaster, she even wrote Shakespeare himself into Dark Sweet Wanton (Hodder & Stoughton, 1979), a novel based on the myth of the infamous 'dark lady' of Shakespeare's sonnets.

To trace the pervasive nature of Shakespeare's influence through Charlotte Lamb's writing would constitute a massive research project in its own right and is - sadly - beyond the scope of this blog.

Happy Birthday Charlotte Lamb!

Born Sheila Ann Mary Coates on December 22nd 1937, my late mother, the novelist Charlotte Lamb, would have been 70 years old today.

She was a wife and mother of five, also now grandmother of five. Not to mention a dedicated best-selling novelist whose books were translated into almost every language in the world. She died suddenly, of a heart attack, seven years ago in October 2000. Still very much loved and missed!

This is Charlotte Lamb, pictured with me on a family holiday in France, sometime in the early eighties.


Apologies for the poor quality but these old photographs don't always scan well. It looks like the Loire Valley, with that romantic castle tower in the background. Though it could have been somewhere in the South. We certainly look like we've caught the sun.

So, a rare shot of Charlotte Lamb with a wine glass in her hand. Although her heroines often indulged in dry white wine and the occasional sophisticated cocktail, my mother was a serious non-drinker. So much so, in fact, I can't remember ever seeing her drink alcohol.

I think this must have been Coca Cola masquerading as Burgundy!

Fans & Top Fives

An aspiring romance writer blogging under the name Tumperkin had this to say about my mother this week:

I have a nostalgic fondness for the old 'black rose' Mills and Boon romance novels of the late 1970s and early 1980s. My mum had a sizeable stash of them and her favourite author was Charlotte Lamb who wrote prolifically for Mills and Boon in the 70s, 80s and 90s. She published over 100 novels with them as well as other single titles.

Read more ...

Thanks for that, Tumperkin, and I wish you all the very best in your own quest to be a romantic novelist. Although I'm published in other fields, I've written six full-length romances myself over the years and not one of them has seen a bookshelf, so I know how desperately uphill that struggle to be published can feel at times!

Tumperkin lists her top 5 favourite Lamb titles as:

1. Frustration
2. Dark Dominion
3. Fever
4. Obsession
5. Duel of Desire

What's yours?

In Memoriam Anne Weale

It was with great sadness that I learnt recently about the death of one of my mother's oldest friends, Anne Weale.

Charlotte Lamb and Anne Weale were both compulsive letter-writers, and after the invention of the fax machine (though before email became popular) they would fax each other sharp, witty, and incredibly detailed multi-page letters on a daily basis. Indeed, it was not unusual for them to send and receive these lengthy faxes several times in a single morning, knocking a topic like romance editing, the latest bestsellers, cover images for a new book, or even some hot publishing gossip back and forth like a couple of top-notch literary tennis players!

I'm sure if my mother had lived to see the widespread use of email, their daily correspondence would have taken on new and even more epic proportions!

For the past few years, Anne Weale had been blogging on literary and other matters at Bookworm on the Net, amongst other writing tasks she was involved in. She was kind enough to mention this Charlotte Lamb site several times on her blog, inviting people to come here and read it. Her death has left me saddened and chastened, knowing that I have not been blogging here as frequently as I used to.

I hope to make up for that in the future. Especially since my father recently sent me a few photographs and other items that belonged to my mother that I can blog about here.

Meanwhile, here is something written by Kassia Krozser last month on 'Romancing the Blog' about Anne Weale and her legacy: Thoughts from a Disorganized Mind.

The comments make interesting reading too.

Gone, But Not Forgotten

I was on a writing course last week for writers of teen fiction, one of my own favourite areas of novel writing. During conversation one evening, I mentioned to the group my mother and her lifelong commitment to writing.

To my surprise, quite a number of the women there - including one of the tutors - had been avid Mills & Boon readers as teenagers and could still remember reading my mother's novels with great pleasure. One was quite upset when she learnt that my mother was dead, as she frequently re-reads her favourite Charlotte Lamb novels and still thought of her as a contemporary writer.

As her best books are re-issued in various formats and editions around the world, including the exciting new Manga versions, I think a whole new generation of Charlotte Lamb fans will be created. If you are one of them, do please drop me an email or comment below this blog post and let us know your experience of Charlotte Lamb romances, thrillers and historicals.

Readers' Postbag: 'The Devil's Arms'

Dear Jane,

Hello. I am writing in regards to a post written by C. (Australia) concerning the title of one of your mother's books about a woman who had lost her memory and found herself engaged to a man, an artist, who hates her, and she also has a twin sister.

The book is The Devil's Arms and the main characters are Linda and Jake. It was the first book I ever read of your mother's when I was 12, and she became one of my favorite authors then and still is today.

She was an amazingly talented writer. My personal favorite Harlequin of hers was called Forbidden Fire, with the characters Louise and Daniel.

I'm so glad I stumbled onto this blog as I am a big fan of Charlotte Lamb. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Susy
(USA)

Emails from Lamb Readers Around the World

This is a small selection from the many emails I receive on a regular basis from Charlotte Lamb fans around the world. Here, only initials of readers are given, plus - when known - their country of origin.

If you would like to send an email, letting me know your favourite Lamb novels or how her romantic novels have affected you, I would be very glad to hear from you. Though if you don't want your email to be published on this blog, please state that in your email and your wishes will be respected.

If you can help with any of the queries below, please leave a Comment after this post or email me with your answers.

Please send your emails to charlottelamb @ poetrycornwall.demon.co.uk

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Hi Jane, I wanted to drop you a line to let you know what a huge fan I am of your mum's work. I especially loved her books from the late 70's. I just reread Dark Dominion and am now rereading for the umpteenth time, the Silken Trap. So fabulous and I'm so glad that you have that tribute website in her honour.


I have copies of all her early books starting where Oriel is the heroine and a Heathcliffe type her match. My favourites include: Long Surrender (can't believe she did that in a weekend), Pagan Encounter, Dark Dominion, the Silken Trap and Temptation.


Again, thanks for having that website.

I've always wondered as to what happened with other Mills & Boon authors. ie. Sally Wentworth, Lillian Peake, Roberta Leigh/Rachel Lindsay. Did your mum know them?

Thanks,
G. (Canada)


REPLY: I don't know if my mother knew those particular authors, but she certainly knew others from the M&B stable. Some of them were close friends. Anne Weale, for instance, and Carole Mortimer - who lived half an hour's drive away from us. The novel mentioned above, with Oriel and Devil Haggard, is the magnificent Call Back Yesterday (1978) - one of my own all-time favourites, too!

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Dear Jane

Your mother was my favorite romance author as well as the author of my favorite book ever. I wish I could remember which title I wanted, but I sure remember the story line. I read several of hers back to back in 1980, so you can see my confusion.

The one I am looking for is the one where the heroine is vacationing in Greece, falls in love with Julian (I think that's his name) and goes back home to prepare for the wedding. When she re-arrives in Greece, she is greeted by the man's father who tells her that his son has jilted her and insists that she marry him instead to save the family honor. After reluctantly marrying him, they fall in love.

I would really like to get a hold of this book again. Can you help me?

Thanks!

M. T.
A HUGE LAMB FAN


REPLY: I'm still trying to work this one out! If anyone can help, please Comment below. There are several set in Greece which I have available, but none of the story lines seem to match.

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I so enjoyed the new look of the blog, Jane! and thank you for all the older titles you mentioned - many I had not know about - especially the three historicals. I'll have to make it a point to search those out.

I too enjoyed her Desert Barbarian - it's interesting that the book starts out in the desert but ends in India (or somewhere like that when Stonor saves her from a tiger). Your Mum was such a good writer. I have a box of her books alone that I would not part from. I used to buy her books just from her name alone and was never disappointed.


I've also wondered about books by Sarah Holland - were these by a sister of yours? I'll look around for a copy of your book. I've been searching for some of your mother's earlier works and hope to get some before the mail rates change over here.

You asked about favorites: of the many I have four:
1. Frustration
2. The Devil's Arms
3. Temptation
4. Abduction

Regards,
A. - who looks forward to your entry when you have time!

REPLY: Sarah Holland is my elder sister. She wrote about a dozen M&Bs in the nineties.

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Jane, I really loved all of Charlotte Lamb's books back when I discovered them in the 70's. There was one that stuck in my mind but I can't remember the title. It was about a woman who lost her memory but was told that she was married to this artist who seemed to hate her. Later it was discovered that he was married to her twin instead of her. Please could you tell me the name of the book as I would love to get it again to read.

I can give you more of the plot if that will help. The hero lived with his mother in the country and when the heroine came to stay with them, she showed that she could cook (made stuffed apples) and couldn't swim when the hero said that she could swim like a fish and didn't cook. She later regained her memory and confronted her sister who said that she left her luggage behind when she fled after hearing bad news.

Thank you heaps

C. (Australia)

REPLY: This search went on for several emails. I don't think it was ever resolved, so if anyone out there recognises this plot ... I was sure I knew this one, but then couldn't seem to pinpoint it. If only my mother had written fewer books; over 150 romances is a large number of plots to hold in your head all at once!

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My wife Usha is a great fan of your mother and has read all her novels till date. The Barbary Wharf series of 5 books is her most favourite of all the romantic novels. She has read those novels during her college days in 1994-5.

However they are not available in India now. I have been trying to buy these 5 novels published in 1992 on the internet for almost 2 years now as I want to gift it to my wife as a surprise. However I have not yet been successful.

Today, your blogspot has rekindled hope in me that I may be able to buy it for her. Can you please help me in this regard. I will be very grateful to you if you can. Please let me know.

Thanking you,

A. (India)

REPLY: This one was easily resolved by pointing the gentleman in the direction of ABE books, later receiving this reply from him:

Dear Jane. Thanks a million for the prompt reply and advice. I had searched earlier on Ebay but did not find the full set of 5 books. However, I was not aware of the other site ABE. I just surfed through that site and am glad that all the 5 books are available, though with different bookstores. Looks like I finally will get the full Barbary Wharf collection for my wife.

Thanking you,

A. (India)


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Jane, thanks for your reply. I was able to get hold of The Tilthammer through an online book dealer I often use. I'm reading it now and really enjoying it. I had no idea your mother had written so many long historical novels or used so many other pen-names. Thanks again for putting your time into the website, I'll try and check it as often as possible and look out for news of other Lamb novels I've never read!

Thanks!

J.F. (Texas)

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Dear Jane

I was so sorry to hear about your mother's death when The Boss's Virgin came out, and I've often wanted to write to your family to express this, but did not know how.

A new Charlotte Lamb book was my reading highlight, and I've collected all of your mum's books since I was 13, and living in Mauritius. I learned a lot from her - grammar, phrasing, new vocab and how to become more assertive, confident and independent as a female going thru her teen years in a male-dominated country.

I'm a mum of 1 aged 37, and I now have every one of her books, except for one called Starcrossed, which I've never managed to come across in English. Mills and Boon could not confirm or deny that they put it out, neither could Harlequin, and this is one that I'm still after, and I would pay a considerable amount for it. I keep posting requests on ebay, to no avail! I do have the French version, but so much is lost in the translation that it's as if it was written by a different author. I've also repeatedly asked M&B if they are likely to publish a tribute to your mum, but apparently they have no plans to do so. Why not, if they've managed to do it for other authors?

I don't have a favourite author any more, as no-one has lived up to your mum for me. I'm glad I found your site - thank you.

Regards

R.R. (London)

REPLY: This desire for a tribute has been a common theme in many emails from Lamb fans. If you too would like to see Harlequin publish a tribute to Charlotte Lamb, or re-issue any of your favourite Lamb novels, please contact them via their eHarlequin website http://www.eharlequin.com/ or via M&B here in the UK at Mills & Boon.co.uk.