Harlequin has confirmed a report first published in Reactor that it will discontinue its historical romance line, Harlequin Historical, in fall 2027 after nearly 40 years.
The decision to put the program to rest was made in response to "evolving reader interests globally," a spokesperson for the publisher said in a statement.
Harlequin Historical launched in 1988 and currently stands as one of the publisher's longer-running series. Its books promise "passion, drama and sumptuous detail" transposed into different historical periods, and packaged—of course—with the publisher’s iconic photographic cover art.
The publisher, now owned by HarperCollins, still offers 13 other series, including Afterglow Books, a "spicy" line for contemporary romance readers that launched in January 2023, as well as lines focused on thrillers, uplifting fiction, and "medical romance." Harlequin has discontinued specific series before, including in 2017, when it eliminated five lines including Western Romance.
The elimination of Harlequin Historical was unexpected, but not necessarily surprising. Founded as a Canadian book packager in 1949, Harlequin became a forerunner of mass-market romance publishing in the 20th century. It has made numerous changes to adapt to the digital age, though the impact of those changes on sales is unclear.
In 2014, the New Yorker linked the decline to the fact that readers had "started getting their romance from erotic—and often self-published—e-books instead of grocery-store paperbacks," an assessment that feels particularly apt given the effective extinction of the mass-market format.
The historical romance genre has encountered speed bumps of its own. Despite the success of historical TV dramas like Bridgerton, publishers have not seen a corresponding sales boost—a conundrum that Julia Quinn, who authored the original Bridgerton book series, recently set out to solve with a new curated subscription box service.
Harlequin seems determined to endure, but some of its other recent cost-cutting measures have sparked controversy. Overseas, the French Literary Translators Association raised the alarm that Harlequin France was implementing AI translation. The publisher confirmed it was "conducting tests" with automation but asserted an "unconditional attachment" to human work.
