Margaret Pargeter (née Appleby; 10 October 1925 – 11 February 2023) was a British romance novelist. Between 1975 and 1986, she published 49 romance novels with Harlequin and Mills & Boon, including titles such as Hold Me Captive and Boomerang Bride. As of 1986, she was one of the most widely read authors in Britain, according to the Public Lending Right scheme. Her first full-length novel, Misconception, was published in 1997 by Scarlet.
Early life Pargeter was born Margaret Appleby in Northumberland, England, on 10 October 1925."Mrs Margaret Pargeter" in the England and Wales Death Index, 1989–2023. West Yorkshire: Wilmington Millennium. Her father was a farmer in the Northumbrian Valley. She started writing in her early teens, always carrying a notebook in her pocket so she could write stories and poems between chores on Smallburn Farm. During the Second World War, she was a volunteer in the fire-fighting section of the Air Raid Precautions.
Career In 1973, Pargeter had her first major break as a writer when her husband urged her to enter a writing competition advertised in the newspaper by a Scottish publishing firm. Although she did not win the romantic story competition, the editor liked her style and asked her to write serial stories. The publisher, Thompsons of Dundee, published a mystery story by Pargeter. The experience gave her the confidence to write her first 66,000-word novel, originally titled Music in the Wind, and submit it to Mills & Boon, who accepted it. The novel was set in the Hebrides where her family spent many holidays.
By the time her first romance novel, Winds from the Sea, was published in 1975, Pargeter had a contract to publish two more. Between 1975 and 1986, Pargeter published 49 romance novels with Mills & Boon in the United Kingdom, and with Harlequin in Canada. In 1997, her 50th book and first full-length novel, Misconception, was published by Scarlet.
Personal life Pargeter lived in Longhorsley near Morpeth. Her husband Leslie, a building engineer, died in 1976 as a result of industrial exposure to asbestos. They had two sons. She died at home, aged 97, on 11 February 2023.
Analysis In an analysis of the author's works, Arlene Moore argued that Pargeter had developed a distinctive style over the course of her career, "drawing on modern 'literary' techniques of writing". She highlighted Pargeter's use of "inner turmoil as a constant counter-point as the heroine reacts to events in the novel", with plots that were "generally complicated as are her characters" as she "maintains near melodramatic levels of stress" throughout.
Moore characterizes Pargeter's early novels such as Better to Forget (1977) and Ride a Black Horse (1975) as more "traditional" in their conflicts and reactions, while her later novels had the "heightened emotionalism" that became her trademark. In The Devil's Bride (1979), the heroine Sandra is forced to marry her cousin's fiancé who has been blinded in a skiing accident, after being coerced by her cousin into deceiving him. Her new husband, a well-known writer, forces her to return to Greece with him, and treats her vindictively as he takes out his anger and frustrations on her. Despite the constant conflict, she grows to love him.
In Boomerang Bride (1979), the male character Wade deeply resents his grandfather who desperately wants an heir to continue running their station in the outback. To spite him, Wade marries Vicki, a temporary home helper whom he considers "very ineligible", as a mutually agreed business arrangement. Although he is desperate not to have children, they succumb to passion. Vicki becomes pregnant and is sent away by her angry husband, only to return four years later with their son, Graham.
In an analysis of Harlequin romances, Tania Modleski quotes extensively from Hold Me Captive (1976). Modleski identifies common tropes within Harlequin romances that are evident in Pargeter's work, including the "more or less brutal" hero whose brutality must be explained by the novel, as well as the heroine's latent "anxiety about rape and longings for power and revenge", underlying an apparent "desire to be taken by force".
In an analysis of Western "desert romances" and their exotification of sheiks, Evelyn Bach examines Pargeter's The Jewelled Caftan (1978). Bach notes that the heroine is suspicious of a sheik she meets who is "clean and literate", which runs counter to her expectations; ironically, when the hero's part-French lineage is finally revealed, this somehow redeems him in the heroine's eyes.
List of romance novels +TitleMills & BooneHarlequinScarletWinds from the Sea1975The Killed Stranger19751976Ride a Black Horse19751976Stormy Rapture1976Hold Me Captive1976Blue Skies, Dark Waters19761977Better to Forget19771978Never Go Back1977Flamingo Moon19771978Wild Inheritance19771978The Jewelled Caftan1978A Man Called Cameron1978Marriage Impossible1978Midnight Magic1978The Wild Rowan19781979Autumn Song1979Boomerang Bride19791981The Devil's Bride1979Only You1979Savage Possession19791980Kiss of a Tyrant1980Deception19801981Dark Surrender19801981The Dark Oasis19801981The Loving Slave19811982Captivity1981Collision1981At First Glance1981Substitute Bride19811983Man from the Kimberleys19821983Not Far Enough1982Prelude to a Song19821983Storm Cycle1982Storm in the Night19831984Clouded Rapture1983Chains of Regret1983Caribbean Gold1983The Demetrious Line1983The Silver Flame1983Born of the Wind1984The Odds Against1984Captive of Fate1985Impasse1985Total Surrender1985Lost Enchantment1985Model of Deception1985The Other Side of Paradise1985Beyond Reach1986A Scarlet Woman1986Misconception colspan="2" 1997 Sources: Twentieth Century Romance and Historical Writers (1994); Misconception (1997)
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