This guest post is from Steve Ammidown. You may remember hearing him recently on Episode 618. The Romance Reader’s Handbook with Steve Ammidown, where we discussed another piece of romance history, The Romance Reader’s Handbook, and from his recent post about romance memorabilia and ephemera.
Please be advised: Some of these images are NSFW!
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The family of legendary artist Robert McGinnis has shared that he passed away on March 10th of this year, at the age of 99. Even if you haven’t heard of Robert McGinnis before this moment, you probably know his work.
One of the most prolific illustrators of his generation, McGinnis is known to have done more than 1400 book covers, as well as some of the most iconic movie posters of all time. Audrey Hepburn with her cat and cigarette? Jane Fonda as Barbarella? James Bond? All McGinnis.
After graduating from Ohio State with a degree in fine art, where he also played football, McGinnis made his way to the advertising scene in New York in the late 1950s. Like many of his peers, McGinnis also began designing covers for the now booming paperback industry. From his first Mike Shayne covers for Dell, his talent for drawing women made him a fast favorite in the pulp detective world.
His style for these covers was so distinctive that his femme fatales became known as “The McGinnis Woman”, with sensuality practically jumping off the cover and only as much clothing as editors required.
As one of the house artists for Avon (alongside other legends like H. Tom Hall) Robert McGinnis was present for the birth of the modern romance novel. The simple but effective McGinnis cover for Kathleen Woodiwiss’s The Flame and The Flower took his work into millions of homes and was just a hint of what was to come from this master.
Through the 1970s, McGinnis and H. Tom Hall traded off romance covers for “The Avon Ladies”- Woodiwiss, Rosemary Rogers, and Bertrice Small among others, with McGinnis providing the evocative cover of Small’s first novel, The Kadin:
But it was in 1977 that Robert McGinnis entered into the partnership he is most known for within the romance genre. Beginning with her first novel, Captive Bride, McGinnis would illustrate the first 13 books by Johanna Lindsey.
While Captive and its follow up A Pirate’s Love followed Avon’s standard small illustration/big text format, McGinnis’s cover for Lindsey’s third book, Fires of Winter (1980), broke all the rules. In an illustration occupying the whole page, we see a barely-clothed dark haired woman lying down vertically on the page, in between the legs of a clearly naked man, on a white background.
While women in various levels of undress had become the standard for historical romance since the mid 1970s, McGinnis’s naked man was something new. And it wouldn’t be the last time.
Over the next ten Lindsey books illustrated by McGinnis, nine featured naked men. Robert had turned his expertise in the female form, which he used to such great effect for detective novels, on its head, providing sensual, detailed, nearly naked eye candy for the straight women who were seen as the primary market for Lindsey’s books.
All of Johanna Lindsey’s books made the New York Times bestseller list, so it’s not that surprising that a couple of McGinnis’s illustrations caught the eyes of censors. It’s reported that the woman on the original Fires of Winter cover was also nude (but tastefully covered), but Avon made Robert add clothes.
That was nothing compared to Tender Is The Storm (1985), though.
The first printing of Tender Is The Storm featured a side shot of a fully naked man, with a well-dressed red headed woman leaning up against him in, a, um, titillating way.
This was too much for some, and the second printing featured what appeared to be a hastily added speedo on the man’s hip. Speedos of course being very prevalent in the 1800s West, the publisher thought better and replaced it in the third printing with a giant starburst sticker proclaiming the book’s best seller status.
Tender wasn’t McGinnis’s first use of naked man hip on a Lindsey book, though. Two years earlier, the cover of A Gentle Feuding featured a man sitting in a sort of The Thinker pose, with a woman at his feet. Most of the editions cut the man off at the mid-thigh, but one of the South American editions shows us that there was more of a full moon quality to the original painting!
The publication of A Heart So Wild, which doesn’t have a naked man on the cover, in 1986 would mark the end of the McGinnis/Lindsey partnership. From that point on, Lindsey worked with Elaine Duillo, leading to the Fabio era.
Robert McGinnis eventually retired from illustrating, devoting himself to the fine art painting he’d loved early on. He kept painting well into his 90s, long enough to see his old artwork come back into style thanks to retro pop culture like Mad Men. A 2017 Vanity Fair profile shows him as quiet and unassuming, but still hard at work- hardly the type of fellow you’d expect to have produced some of the most sensual romance covers ever made.
With Robert McGinnis’s death, we reach a sort of end of an era. Elaine Duillo, H. Tom Hall, and their contemporary artist colleagues are gone as well, as are all of the Avon Ladies that McGinnis helped make famous.
Especially at a moment where oil painted covers are gone along with most outward sensuality on covers thanks to the combination of book bans, TikTok, and an expressed dislike of sexually provocative cover art among a certain segment of romance readers, it’s important to remember the visual vocabulary of romance that these artists made.
In many ways, it’s what made the genre the behemoth it is today.
Thank you for this. The greatest cover artist of the past 70 years has left us. R.I.P.
RIP, king.
What a wonderful article, thanks for sharing.
That speedo really cracked me up!
Great tribute by Steve Ammidown, thanks for posting! I have to say, since cutting my teenage teeth on the Avon Ladies & these scrumptious covers, bring back the naked people. I’m sick of the cartoon covers. They do nothing for me.
Great tribute by Steve Ammidown, thanks for posting! I have to say, since cutting my teenage teeth on the Avon Ladies & these scrumptious covers, bring back the naked people. I’m sick of the cartoon covers. They do nothing for me.
Thank you for this post! I’ve been increasingly interested in collecting all things romance – the books, the ephemera, and the art.
I’m a reader but also a huge book collector and after going to the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair for the last few years, I’m always struck by the fact that there is no romance represented! Other genre fiction has gotten its due. There are huge dealers of vintage and collectible Science fiction, horror, and mystery (and also pulp fiction) but never romance. It’s frustrating because this is such an old song…romance and the people who put their work into the industry are not taken seriously.
However, from a collector point of view, vintage books are pretty reasonably priced when you can find them.
I am curious who in the Butchery considers themselves a collector, as well as a reader? And what do you collect, how did you decide what to collect? So far I have picked up titles and covers at used bookstores that appeal to me without putting much thought into a cohesive collection. I would love to hear what other people think about how they collect romance.
oops…autocorrect changed that…I meant the Bitchery!
@emily.c: My collection started in the 80s with first edition crime novels/series; it helped that I worked at an independent mystery bookstore. It was about the time of John Dunning’s BOOKED TO DIE when non-collectors realized “Holy shit, there’s money to be made in those dusty old books?!” Everyone became a book hound.
Romance novels were never a thing at the antiquarian book shows, too low-brow, I guess. Used bookstores, OTOH, were gold mines for romance, especially old school. You are doing it right: collect what you love, cohesion be damned.
OK. Can anyone clean up the coding gibberish before my reply to emily.c? I didn’t do it, I swear. Thank you.
Great, the gibberish disappeared. Now I feel stupid. Time to see myself out. Love the whole article, BTW, and those covers will always rock.
@emily.c: I consider myself a collector, to some extent. I don’t have a lot of room, so I’m selective about what I choose to collect, and I also have allergies to airborne things like dust and mold that prevent me from being able to collect a lot of older books. One thing that sparked my interest was finding an unusual edition of “Skye O’Malley” by Bertrice Small (more about that here: https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2021/03/a-very-special-habo-the-classics-of-romance-collectors-edition/ ).
Other ways I collect are by author; I have almost everything Tere Michaels has written, except for her Ellora’s Cave edition of “Three To Get Ready”, which is extremely difficult to find. Cat Sebastian is another author I’m something of a completist about.
Sometimes I find a line, such as the Avon True Romance line that was historical romances aimed at teens in the early aughts (probably looking to cash in with this age group like the Sunfire books had some years earlier). This line had well-known romance authors like Beverly Jenkins, Karen Hawkins, Meg Cabot, and Lorraine Heath.
One rare book dealer that does pay respect to romance is Type Punch Matrix, founded by Rebecca Romney. She did a whole catalog based on a romance collection that she sold to a university. Her site also has a section for selling rare romance – these tend to lean heavily towards hardcover romances from the 1920s-40s.
The Ripped Bodice was doing a special IG channel and section on their website where you could purchase vintage or significant romances as a collector. I haven’t checked in while, so I don’t know if they’re still doing it.
I have The Art of Robert E. McGinnis and love his work, so thanks for this!
As a historical romance novel fan, book collector, and an artist myself, I much prefer the older covers over what is out there today.
I get that sexy or older covers are not everyone’s thing, but I am so damn sick and tired of watching these stupid book bans happen, or feeling that we’re going back to the days where we should somehow be ashamed of reading something with a sexy cover or title. This is what I read. This is what I like. I like the things I like for ME, not for you, not for anyone else’s approval. This is not the 1800’s. Get over it. /rant
RIP, Mr. McGinnis. Your talent will be missed…
Thank you for this very interesting article.
Am I correct in thinking there is now much more sex in the book than when there was nudity on the covers? Can someone explain that?
Thank you, Steve, for this piece. I remember many of these covers when they were new. Robert McGinnis was a talented artist.
@Kelly Larivee & Crystal F: SAME!!! I actually think the cartoon covers are censoring and infantilizing grown women and trying to push us back into the box of the little woman who thinks and does whatever the big strong man wants. I dislike them immensely and won’t buy them. If it’s a favorite author, I’ll pick it up from the library instead.
As for collecting, cover art and cover models are the reason for the several thousand books I currently own, starting in the mid-1990s with Fabio on Johanna Lindsey’s “Defy Not the Heart.” I don’t re-read books (too many books, too little time) so the ones I own are for the covers, aka my art gallery. I actually have all of the JL books with the covers shown above. I like the current man chest covers except they tend to cut off the head and I’d like to see the person. Plus, they’re getting replaced by the stupid cartoons since authors do have to be able to sell their work. The Puritanicalism in America is back and I have never understood why it’s bad to let children see human bodies but fine to see people’s heads being blown off!
Not that I have any opinions on the subject!
Wow. I had no idea. None. I started reading romance steadily 15 or 20 years ago, long after these books came out. Naked men on covers? Really? Color me astonished.
Thank you for this.
Thanks for this great, informative post, Steve. I love McGinnis’s pulp fiction covers. I’ve always been a fan of oil painting covers, although my taste runs more toward the old Signet Regency style, which was distinctive and classy. But I have to admire the way McGinnis pushed the envelope, and it’s hilarious that the women are in formal gowns(even jewelry and gloves in the last illustration) while the men are butt naked!
Thanks for this – very cool to see his origins.
I used to have that original cover of Tender is the Storm. And I always regret that I got rid of it. #RegretsIHaveThem
Such a lost art! I’m always scouring thrift stores and garage sales for old original covers of that era of romance. Glad to see such a great in the art and romance world receive such a loving tribute