1981

Straight to the heart: Harmony

"Dreaming with books open". So read the campaign launch of the Harmony series, which appeared on newsstands in 1981. In March of that year a joint venture between Arnoldo Mondadori Editore and Harlequin Enterprises introduced to the Italian market the romantic fiction serial. Compelling love stories - often tortured and complicated, but always with a happy ending - were offered each month to an increasingly large and loyal female public. The move by Mondadori, which was rewarded by successful sales of all the titles in the series, represented at the same time a change in the behaviour and a significant enlargement of the book market.

Although the series had success in more than 100 other countries, it would be more correct to speak of an adaptation into Italian rather than a translation because each book is reworked to elaborate four crucial moments of the narrative: the description of the landscapes, the environments, the actions and the rhythm of the dialogues. A particular intervention that has the objective of avoiding “breaking the rhythm” while maintaining “a narrative tone that is always courteous.” In short, the objective is to “tell a story in a winning way.” Today, more than two million Italian women from all social classes read part of the monthly output of over fifty titles printed in the different Harmony series and in the Edizioni Harlequin Mondadori series. This "high-quality entertainment product" introduced romantic literature to the most demanding readers and got new segments of the female public interested in books.