Ballrooms and banquets may dominate traditional historical romance, but today I am celebrating the stories rooted in the working and professional classes. While many historical romance novels focus on dukes, debutantes, and the glittering upper class, there’s a rich world of love unfolding among clerks, governesses, shopkeepers, labourers and artisans.

Historical Romance has firm foundations in the lives of the rich and titled—there’s a majestic escapism to a world that is not only outside of everyday life but also out of reach forever. However, there is an undeniable reality to those privileged stories, and that is that the labour that made life so magical for the rich was carried out by the working and professional classes. 

Working class historical romances grapple with different questions in the game of love. Propriety and expectations are different, daily meals are not a given, and a small accident or a bad decision can have dire consequences. But beyond that is community, resilience, and connection. Love and work go hand in hand, and the promise of forever can be more touching because of that.

In these working‑class historical romances, love and labour are intertwined—and are more powerful for it.

Blueprints, Battlelines and Ballrooms is a late Victorian era romance set in an architectural firm, where the architect’s assistant battles with the principal architect’s daughter, who longs for her own seat at the drafting table.

A barmaid and a sailor who have known one another for years find themselves at a crossroads on New Years Eve. Of Salt and Sweetness explores work, family and fortune.

Ourselves and Immortality is a historical romance about two morticians. Set in 1902, it explores the importance of connection, the consequences of feeling othered, and the fragility of love.

The Hellion of Drury Lane sees two carpenters work together behind the scenes in a theatre. Set in Regency England.

Set in 1841 in New York State, The Caretaker is a love story between a teacher and the school caretaker against a backdrop of rebellion and a country finding its way in a new world.

The Dravenhearst Brides is set on a haunted bourbon distillery estate in 1930s Kentucky.

A tenant farmer returned from the war and a worker in the Women’s Land Army fight their attraction to one another in Out with Lanterns, a rural romance set in the English homefront during the First World War.

England, 1383: A blacksmith offers to marry his childhood friend and secret love after she falls pregnant to her employer in The Blacksmiths Bride.

A lepidopterist (butterfly scientist) and real estate magnate agree to a fake dating scheme. His by Opening Day is a turn of the century romance in a worlds fair setting.

How Frances Wainwright Learned to Love is a doctor/nurse romance set in a teaching hospital in the aftermath of the Crimean War.