Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

Kathleen E. Woodiwiss (1939-2007) was an American novelist widely credited with creating the modern historical romance genre. A housewife and former flight attendant with no publishing background, she wrote her debut novel, The Flame and the Flower, largely to entertain herself, and submitted it unsolicited to Avon Books; published in 1972 as one of the first mass-market original paperback novels (rather than a hardcover reprint), it combined an explicit, sustained love story with sweeping historical-adventure plotting in a way American romance publishing had not done before, sold spectacularly, and set off the genre boom -- soon nicknamed, not always kindly, the 'bodice ripper' era -- that shaped romance publishing for the next two decades. Over a thirty-five-year career she wrote twelve further novels and two novellas, mostly standalone, returning only once to build out a connected family saga: two further Birmingham family novels and two anthology novellas extended The Flame and the Flower's world into the next generation. Shanna (1977) and The Wolf and the Dove (1974) became her other signature bestsellers. Known for meticulous historical research and long, slow-building courtships rather than incident-driven plotting, Woodiwiss died of cancer in 2007; her final novel, Everlasting, was published four months later.