Lillian Warren, pseudonym Rosalind Brett (
fl. 1950s) was a British author who wrote for
Mills & Boon romance. As a prolific author of romance novels, she had two other pseudonyms, Kathryn Blair and Celine Conway. At the height of her career, Warren was considered one of publisher's superstars, who set high sales records and a standard for romances published during the 1950s.
Joseph McAleer in his book
Passion's Fortune: The Story of Mills and Boon, describes Brett's work as so sexy for the era, that it often had to be "watered down". According to McAleer, she is credited by
Anne Weale as inventing the "punishing kiss". Brett/Warren came to
Mills & Boon from
Rich & Cowan, a publisher she felt didn't offer her enough support.
Book notes
Rosalind Brett's romances from the 1950s are historically significant for the
Mills & Boon series, by her choice of locations. Her stories take readers away from the
British Isles, to East Africa:
Rhodesia,
Nyasaland, providing glimpses of Salisbury (present day
Harare) and
Bulawayo, the second city in what is now
Zimbabwe. Other locations are
French Morocco,
Nigeria, South Africa, and the
Pacific Islands. The main
characters are at work trying to build prosperous lives in what were British, French and Portuguese colonies.
Publishing in post
World War II period, Brett writes at the crossroads of history when, colonial rule once paramount in parts of
Africa,
Asia and the
Pacific, would come to be challenged. While her stories depict the colonial life, absent from them is any underlying tension between rulers and subjects.
Bibliography
As Rosalind BrettSingle novels
Secret Marriage - 1947, ASIN: B000WHQZ2I Amazon Standard Identification Number
Pagan Interlude - 1947, ASIN: B000WHPKB0 Amazon Standard Identification Number
For My Sins - 1966, ASIN: B0045B1694 Amazon Standard Identification Number
^Hsu-Ming Teo - Desert Passions: Orientalism and Romance Novels 2012- Page 203 "“Rosalind Brett” (Lillian Warren), one of the most popular postwar authors for Mills & Boon, tapped into a growing trend when she wrote stories about independent young women who went out to the sunlit plains of Africa, where they met, ..."
^Abby Gaines - - Her So-Called Fiancé 2012 It was written by Kathryn Blair, who also wrote as Rosalind Brett and Celine Conway (though it took me a while to figure out my three favorite authors were the same person!). I loved those books! They set such high ideals for the kind of ..."
^Joseph McAleer Passion’s Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon Print publication date: 1999 Print
ISBN9780198204558 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198204558.001.0001
08 Chapter PF "the 1950s, Lillian Warren (as Rosalind Brett), earned the wrath of Canadian readers when her heroine, while paddling a canoe in a Canadian lake, dropped her "