Harlequin Nurse Romances Part I

To my mind one of the oddest publishing phenomena is the nurse romance. Specifically the Harlequin nurse romance which, in the early to mid sixties, dominated their book list. Here are some statistics:



                   nurse titles   total titles



1953-1959           81           477        17%



1960-1965          268          479        56%



There were no nurse romances from 1949 to 1952, three in 1953, an average of 10 per year for the next 5 years, 25 in 1959, an average of 45 from 1960 to 1965, then 25 in 1966 and dropping off from there. The most amazing statistic is that 56% of all Harlequin titles for six years (1960 - 1965) were nurse romances. All but 10 of the rest were non-nurse romances.



Here are three with "Nurse" in the title.

Harlequin 362 - May 1956

Harlequin 362 back

Harlequin 384 - April 1957

Harlequin 384 back

Harlequin 423 - May 1958

Harlequin 423 back