Historical romance is a subgenre of two literary genres, the romance novel and the historical novel.
Historical romance is set before World War II. Many historical romances include contemporary attitudes, as, for example, the heroines often have far more education than was the norm in their time period.
This subgenre includes a wide variety of other subgenres, including Regency romance, Medieval, Tudor, Elizabethan, Georgian ,Victorian, Western, Pirate, Native American, Civil War, and Americana.. (Wikipedia)