June 3 is the birthday of the "founding mother of the historical romance genre": Kathleen Woodiwiss (1939), born Kathleen Erin Hogg in Alexandria, Louisiana. She met her future husband, Air Force Lieutenant Ross Woodiwiss, at a dance when she was 16, and they eloped. She worked part-time as a fashion model and saved her money to buy a typewriter, which she gave to her husband one Christmas. She told him it was for him to write his poetry on; she really bought it for herself, and she worked on her first novel, The Flame and the Flower, during his absences, afraid to tell him what she was up to. The hefty manuscript was turned down eight times, but then she sent it to some paperback publishers; an editor at Avon, raiding the slush pile for something to read on a rainy afternoon, was captivated, and the book sold 600,000 copies on its publication in 1972.
Woodiwiss single-handedly remade the romance genre, setting the standard for nearly every bodice-ripper to follow. Previously, romance novels had been pretty thin, literally and figuratively. Her books were often 700 pages long, heavily plotted, and full of carefully researched historical detail and steamy sex scenes. Her heroines were strong and dynamic, considering the genre and the time period.
Woodiwiss wrote 12 more books after The Flame and the Flower, taking her time on each one to get the historical details right. She died of cancer in 2007, and her last book, Everlasting, was published posthumously.
Source: Writer's Almanac 2014
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