Rosalind Brett

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.