Publisher · founded 1949 · Toronto
Harlequin
Harlequin is a Canadian romance paperback house founded in Winnipeg in 1949 as a reprint publisher; its early books and its 1957 to 1970s Mills & Boon titles are reissues, not first editions.
- Editions tracked
- 1,746
- First editions
- 0
- Books
- 1,744
- Years
- 1959 to 2016
About Harlequin
Harlequin is a Canadian publisher of mass-market romance fiction, founded in Winnipeg in 1949 and now a division of HarperCollins.
Richard Bonnycastle, Jack Palmer and Doug Weld started the company to reprint other publishers' books as cheap paperbacks. Its first title was Nancy Bruff's The Manatee (May 1949), and the early list mixed westerns, mysteries, romance and non-fiction, and its reprints included books by Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle; the Christie titles appeared between 1953 and 1958.
In 1957 Harlequin began distributing the British firm Mills & Boon's romances in North America, and by 1964 it was publishing only Mills & Boon titles under the Harlequin name. It moved to Toronto in 1969 and bought Mills & Boon outright in 1971.
Torstar took a majority stake in 1975 and full ownership in 1981, and sold Harlequin to News Corp in 2014, since when it has sat within HarperCollins. Its current series lines include Harlequin Romance, Presents, Desire, Intrigue and Special Edition (Desire and Special Edition came with Silhouette, bought from Simon & Schuster in 1984), and it also runs imprints such as MIRA and Love Inspired. Janet Dailey became the first American author it put under contract, in late 1975, and Anne Mather and Violet Winspear were among the prolific writers used to promote Harlequin Presents.
Holding a copy? The first edition checker shows Harlequin's practice for the year on your title page.
Identification
How to identify Harlequin first editions
Authors
Books
Published by Harlequin
Frequently asked questions
How do I identify a Harlequin first edition?
How many Harlequin books does MyVolumes track?
We track 1,746 editions published by Harlequin, 0 of them first editions, across 1,744 books.
Where these facts come from
- Harlequin Enterprises, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- Harlequin Paperbacks, Bruce Peel Special Collections, University of Alberta (bpsc.library.ualberta.ca)
- Agatha Christie Canadian Harlequins, Collecting Christie (collectingchristie.com)
- Our History, Mills & Boon (millsandboon.co.uk)
- First edition identification by publisher, ILAB (ilab.org)
- First Editions: Why, When and How, BookAddiction, 2024 (bookaddiction.co.uk)
Every fact on this page was checked against the sources listed. Checked 21 October 2026. Reviewed by Harriet Ellis; read how we check facts.