ROMANCE specialized in romance and love stories set among exotic and distant lands, in historical settings, and in the face of danger and adventure. This was the second pulp magazine published by Ridgway, a company which had been successful first with EVERYBODY'S MAGAZINE, a mass-market title printed on quality paper and aimed at both men and women, and secondly with ADVENTURE, a purely pulp magazine aimed primarily at men. It debuted in November 1919, and at first published mostly fiction in the swashbuckling mold of heroic "romance" as the term was used in the 19th Century. It came out with a dozen monthly issues and stopped; in November 1928 it was revived and ran monthly until the last issue in January of 1930. Throughout its life it emphasized remote and exotic locations and situations, but classic themes of love and romance were always important, and were often stated explicitly on the cover blurbs. Beginning with the June 1929 issue it absorbed EVERYBODY'S, which by that time had become strictly a pulp magazine with lower-quality stories presented on cheap paper.