Western romance literature: History and Key Facts

Western romance literature denotes a genre subset of romance literature, sometimes referred to as cowboy romance. Works within this category typically adhere to the characteristics of romance but take place in a western setting, frequently the American frontier. Though often historical, the genre is not restricted to romantic works set in the period of American settlement but extends to contemporary romantic works that centre around cowboys or other tropes of the Western genre.

The genre originated in the 1800s, popularised by the works of Bret Harte, Zane Grey and Catharine Sedgwick who wrote love stories about cowboys and their heroines, and often their conflict with Native Americans. The genre gained mass readership in the 1950s with the rise of ranch romance magazines and in modern day, the Western romance pulp fiction novel like that published by Mills and Boon or Harlequin.

These stories typically follow the romance of a cowboy, ranch hand or bull rider and his heroine, contrasting the fragility of love with the severity of the harsh landscape. They're usually set on the American frontier, rurally, in a ranch or on a farm. The genre also appears throughout original and adapted films, such as Last of the Mohicans (1992), Brokeback Mountain (2006), The Longest Ride (2015) and Shane (1953).

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