With the decline of commercial lending libraries in the late 1950s, the company's most profitable move was to realise that there would remain a strong market for romance novels, but that sales would depend on readers having easy access to reasonably priced books. There, they became known as 'the brown books', because of their distinctive binding. These titles were initially sold through weekly, two-penny libraries.

Historian Ross McKibbin has argued that 'it was the rapid growth of the ‘tuppenny libraries’ in the interwar years which transformed Mills and Boon into a firm which exclusively published romantic fiction.' The favourite genre was romance and the company decided to concentrate on hardback romances, a policy which became increasingly successful. In the 1930s the company noted the rapid rise of commercial libraries and the growing appetite for escapism during the Depression years. The company was purchased on 1 October 1971, by Harlequin Enterprises of Canada, their North American distributor.įrom the very beginning, Mills & Boon published in a form and at a price that was within the reach of a wide readership. It was not until the 1930s that the company began to concentrate specifically on romances. In its early years the company also published 'educational textbooks, socialist tracts and Shakespeare' as well as 'travel guides, children’s and craft books'. Between 19, it published numerous adventure titles by Jack London. Mills & Boon also published-in 19-two early works by Hugh Walpole, including the very successful Mr Perrin and Mr Traill ( which was subsequently filmed). An early signing was the mystery and crime writer Victor Bridges. Mills & Boon was founded by Gerald Rusgrove Mills (3 January 1877 – 23 September 1928) and Charles Boon ( – 2 December 1943) in 1908 as a general fiction publisher, although their first book was, prophetically, a romance. Modern Mills & Boon novels, over 100 of which are released each month, cover a wide range of possible romantic subgenres, varying in explicitness, setting and style, although retaining a comforting familiarity that meets reader expectations. Its print books are presently out-numbered and out-sold by the company's e-books, which allowed the publisher to double its output. The two companies offer a number of imprints that between them account for almost three-quarters of the romance paperbacks published in Britain.

In 1971, the publisher was bought by the Canadian company Harlequin Enterprises, its North American distributor based in Toronto, with whom it had a long informal partnership. The company moved towards escapist fiction for women in the 1930s. It was founded in 1908 by Gerald Rusgrove Mills and Charles Boon as a general publisher. Mills & Boon is a romance imprint of British publisher Harlequin UK Ltd.

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