Historical romance is the genre's grande dame. Before romantasy, before BookTok, before dark romance — there was the Regency ballroom, the smouldering duke, the ruined debutante. And despite the many waves that have come through romance in the last decade, historical romance has never stopped selling. If you're new to the subgenre or looking for what to read after Bridgerton, here are the essentials organised by era and mood.
Regency (The Big One)
The Bridgerton Series — Julia Quinn
Heat: Steamy. Books: 8 (plus Queen Charlotte, plus Rokesby prequels).
The series that built the modern Regency audience, even before Shonda Rhimes adapted it. Eight Bridgerton siblings, eight books, one of the most beloved family dynamics in the genre. Start with The Duke and I (Daphne and Simon) — yes, even though The Viscount Who Loved Me (Anthony and Kate) is probably the stronger book. Reading them in order makes the family cameos land properly.
The Wallflowers Series — Lisa Kleypas
Heat: Steamy. Books: 4.
Four friends, none of whom are getting any attention at the Regency marriage mart, pledge to find each other husbands. Kleypas is widely considered the queen of Regency historical romance and The Wallflowers is her most-loved series. It Happened One Autumn (Lillian and Marcus) is the fan favourite of the four.
A Week to Be Wicked — Tessa Dare
Heat: Steamy. Tropes: Opposites attract, fake engagement, forced proximity.
Tessa Dare writes Regency with a rom-com sensibility — faster, funnier, lighter than Kleypas, but with the same emotional weight. A Week to Be Wicked (Colin and Minerva) is her most-recommended standalone. A geologist and a rake end up on a week-long road trip to Scotland. Hijinks.
The Duke Who Didn't — Courtney Milan
Heat: Steamy. Tropes: Childhood friends to lovers, biracial leads.
Courtney Milan writes historical romance that takes seriously the people who were erased from most traditional Regencies — people of colour, working-class characters, queer leads. The Duke Who Didn't is set in a Chinese diaspora community in Victorian England. Warm, witty, quietly radical.
Scottish Highlands
Outlander — Diana Gabaldon
Heat: Steamy (with violence — not cosy). Books: 9 + novellas.
Genre-defying. Time travel, historical fiction, romance, adventure — all in one 800-page first volume. Claire Randall steps through a stone circle in 1945 Scotland and lands in 1743, where she meets Jamie Fraser. The series is a commitment (nine volumes, tens of thousands of pages) but the first book stands on its own.
Devil in Winter — Lisa Kleypas
Heat: Steamy. Series: Wallflowers #3.
Technically Regency rather than Highland, but Sebastian St. Vincent is the book's Scottish anti-hero, and this is widely considered one of the greatest single romance novels ever written. Evie Jenner elopes to Gretna Green with the man who tried to kidnap her best friend. The redemption arc is extraordinary.
The Bride — Julie Garwood
Heat: Steamy. Setting: Medieval Scotland.
One of the classic Highland romances. Jamie Jamison is ordered by her father to marry a Scottish laird sight unseen. Alec Kincaid is expecting a docile English bride. Garwood's medieval Scotland is more fairy-tale than historical, but it's a foundational text of the subgenre.
Victorian & Edwardian
Bringing Down the Duke — Evie Dunmore
Heat: Steamy. Series: A League of Extraordinary Women #1.
Victorian England, 1879. Annabelle Archer is one of the first women to attend Oxford on scholarship. Her political work for women's suffrage lands her face-to-face with the Duke of Montgomery. Feminist historical romance that actually takes the history seriously. The rest of the series follows her friends — all brilliant.
Cotillion — Georgette Heyer
Heat: Sweet. Era: Regency.
The foundational author of the Regency romance subgenre. Heyer wrote between 1921 and 1972, and almost everyone writing Regency today is working in her shadow. Cotillion is her most charming — a comedy of manners about a young woman who decides to marry the wrong cousin to secure her inheritance. Clean, witty, and historically immaculate.
Gothic Historical
My Lady Jane — Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows
Heat: Sweet. Era: Tudor England (historical fantasy).
The nine-day queen of England if she'd actually been a shapeshifter. Fully absurd, fully delightful, fully romance. For readers who want the ballgowns and royal intrigue but a tone closer to The Princess Bride.
Rebecca — Daphne du Maurier
Heat: Sweet (the suspense is the point). Era: 1930s.
Arguably the gothic romance that defined the subgenre. A young unnamed narrator marries widower Maxim de Winter and moves to his Cornwall estate, Manderley, where the shadow of his first wife Rebecca hangs over everything. Dark, atmospheric, unforgettable. Not strictly a romance (the ending is complicated) but every gothic romance written since owes it a debt.
Where to Start
If you loved Bridgerton the show: read Julia Quinn's books in order, then move to Lisa Kleypas's Wallflowers. That's the full Regency welcome.
If you want something faster and funnier: Tessa Dare is your author. Start with A Week to Be Wicked.
If you want political depth and diverse casts: Evie Dunmore and Courtney Milan. Start with Bringing Down the Duke.
If you want the most commercially successful single book in the subgenre: Lisa Kleypas's Devil in Winter. There's a reason readers have been recommending this one for 20 years.
If you want the all-time commitment read: Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. Nine books, a TV show, and decades of reader devotion.