Harlequin Enterprises
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Harlequin Enterprises Limited is a Toronto, Ontario-based company that is the world's leading publisher of series romance and women's fiction. Owned by the Torstar Corporation, the largest newspaper publisher in Canada, the company publishes nearly 110 new titles each month in 27 different languages.
Harlequin was founded in 1949 by publishing executive Richard Bonnycastle and started out publishing a wide range of books from Westerns to Romances to cookbooks. In 1957 Harlequin began acquiring the rights to, and publishing, novels from Mills & Boon. Due to the huge popularity of this genre, by 1964 the company was exclusively publishing romance fiction and in 1971 it purchased Mills & Boon, forming Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited in the UK.
The company has continued to evolve over the years, expanding with offices in New York, London, Tokyo, Milan, Sydney, Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Athens, Budapest, Granges-Pacot and Warsaw, as well as licensing agreements in nine other countries. It has also expanded its range of books, offering everything from thrillers and commercial literary fiction under the MIRA imprint; Bridget Jones-style 'Chick lit' under its Red Dress Ink imprint; fantasy books under the LUNA imprint; and inspirational fiction published under the name Steeple Hill and Steeple Hill Café; male action adventure books under Gold Eagle imprint.
