Romance Fiction Has a History

Every collector of anything has that short list of items in the back of their mind that they’d instantly pay any price for if they find it in the right circumstances. Sometimes it’s something well known and rare like a missile-firing Boba Fett or a Billy Ripken error card, and sometimes it’s something a bit more obscure, like the anti-drug Spider-Man storyline that was printed without the Comics Code seal in 1971.

The collecting of romance novels has historically been a little different. Readers have collected entire lines or accumulated all the works of a particular author. Others have simply never gotten rid of any romance they ever read, resulting in time capsule storage rooms like the one in this tiktok video. Still, a few rare things float out there drawing excitement whenever they appear. Nora Roberts completists might yearn for a copy of Rhapsody Romance Magazine no. 8, containing her simultaneously acknowledged but disavowed story Melodies of Love. Fans of Johanna Lindsey will search long and hard for a first printing of 1985’s Tender is the Storm with its controversial and revealing cover.

But other romances are collectible because of what they represented when they were published. Entwined Destinies by Rosalind Welles is one of those books.

Written by journalist Elsie B. Washington under the pen name Rosalind Welles, Entwined Destinies was a collaboration with Candlelight Romance editor Vivian Stephens, and was acclaimed as the first time a Black author had written a category romance with Black characters. The book received a considerable amount of press and a reported 60,000 copy print run, but it’s nearly impossible to find a copy of that original printing today. Two reprints exist- a UK edition and an edition published in 1994 by Genesis Press- but those are difficult to find as well.

I have searched for the Candlelight edition of this book for at least five years, but it rarely shows up in any of the usual places. And when it has, the prices have frequently been too rich for my blood, sometimes reaching over $100, or the copies have been in poor condition and not worth it. There may be a few reasons for this scarcity- Vivian Stephens has said that the actual print run was closer to 30,000, small for a romance at the time, and other sources have indicated that it was mostly distributed in “urban market”, suggesting that any remaining copies would be geographically clustered, making it unlikely you’d run across it today at the local used bookstore. Also, many of those existing copies may already be in the hands of collectors reluctant to part with such a significant text.

You can imagine how thrilled I was to come across the book on AbeBooks a few weeks ago. The condition was listed as “good”, which isn’t terribly helpful, and there was no image of the book, but the price was less than $100, so I gambled. Imagine my surprise when it arrived and it was the nearly pristine copy pictured above. It shows almost no signs of wear and was likely never even read. A truly fortunate find that I’ll treasure forever. The cover image is worth zooming in on here:

The simple vignette by artist Joel Iskowitz sets the scene in London and gives us magazine correspondent Kathy in an embrace with oil tycoon Lloyd. As innocuous as it seems, it marked the first time a category romance publisher had featured a Black couple on the cover. Harlequin wouldn’t catch up until Sandra Kitt’s Adam and Eva, purchased by Vivian Stephens during her short time with the company, four years later.

Like Rubie Saunders, Elsie Washington was a pioneer in the magazine industry. After graduating from City College of New York with a journalism degree, she went to work for the New York Post before becoming one of the first black reporters at Life Magazine. From there she moved on to become and editor at Newsweek, which is where she was working when she wrote Entwined Destinies.

Washington combined her identities as journalist and author several times. She covered the first Romantic Times Booklover’s Convention in 1982 for Newsweek, and was interviewed for the weekly radio version of the magazine, Newsweek On Air (she appears around the 54:00 mark):

The following year, Elsie B. Washington again reported for Newsweek about the Booklovers Convention (again around the 54:00 mark), this time traveling with other conference goers aboard what was known as The Love Train, an Amtrak train that went from California to New York City. The train ride and ensuing conference was filmed for a documentary titled Where the Heart Roams, which was released in 1987. Washington appears in the film and can be seen about halfway through the extended trailer for the film on the PBS POV website.

After leaving Newsweek, Elsie Washington moved on to Essence Magazine, where she served as editor into the 1990s. But she retained her connections in the romance world. In the mid-90s, she appeared on a New York cable access show with Vivian Stephens, Rochelle Alers, and Donna Hill– it’s well worth the 15 minutes to watch!

In addition to her work at Essence, Elsie Washington published a non-fiction book in 1996 titled Uncivil War: The Struggle Between Black Men and Women. I’ve also found evidence that Washington was behind a zine called African-American People during the 1990s, but I’ve never seen a copy- if you have, let me know!

Elsie B. Washington passed away in 2009. With a single book she left an indelible mark on the romance genre, something few can say.

Quick note: If you read my entry about Rubie Saunders, you’ll recall that Saunders published earlier, which muddies the waters a bit on Entwined Destinies’ claim of first. There are arguments to be made on both sides, but let’s suffice it to say that Entwined was definitely the first of the 80s American romance boom.