Bibliography D-G

Items with the "**" have not been personally checked. This means that the details given in the entry may not be entirely accurate.

From this page you may return to the main Romance Scholarship page or go directly to

• Academics Who Write Romance
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  • Bibliography A-C - the first part of our bibliography of academic articles and books about romance.
  • Bibliography H-L - the third part of our bibliography of academic articles and books about romance.
  • Bibliography M-O - the fourth part of our bibliography of academic articles and books about romance.
  • Bibliography P-S - the fifth of our bibliography of academic articles and books about romance.
  • Bibliography T-Z - the last part of our bibliography of academic articles and books about romance.
• Bibliography of Scholarship in Languages Other than English.
• Dissertation Abstracts
• Guides to the Genre
• Romance in the Media - lists news items/features items about romance.
  • Romance in the Media A-I
  • Romance in the Media J-Z
• Romance Resources for Academics - lists romance-related resources which may be of interest to academics.
• Writers on Romance - lists items written about the genre by romance authors but not published in academic journals or books.

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D

Dalsgaard, Inger H. 2009. 

"Consumed by Romance: Narration, Branding, and Participation in the Digital Marketplace." In Internet Fictions, 128-146. (Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars). [In the introduction to this volume of essays the editors mention that "Inger H. Dalsgaard [...] investigates the practices of romance fiction writers and readers on the net through the lense [sic] of late capitalist marketing strategies and ideologies which seek to market products as goods designed by the customer rather than as prefabricated objects: romance sites, she contends, and the marketing of toys for children have a lot more in common than one might suppose."]

Daly, Brenda O. 1989. 

'Laughing WITH, or Laughing AT the Young-Adult Romance', The English Journal, 78.6: 50-60.

Dandridge, Rita B., 2003. 

'The Race, Gender, Romance Connection: A Black Feminist Reading of African American Women's Historical Romances', in Doubled Plots: Romance and History, see below, pp. 185-201. Excerpt

Dandridge, Rita B., 2003. 

"African American Women's Historical Romances: Race and Gender Revisited," The 2000-2003 Proceedings of the SW/Texas PCA/ACA Conference, Ed. Leslie Fife, pp. 42-56. Whole proceedings online here.

Dandridge, Rita B., 2004. 

Black Women's Activism: Reading African American Women's Historical Romances, African-American Literature and Culture, 5 (New York: Peter Lang). Index and extracts

Darbyshire, Peter, 2000. 

‘Romancing the World: Harlequin Romances, the Capitalist Dream, and the Conquest of Europe and Asia’, Studies in Popular Culture 23.1 [1]

Darbyshire, Peter, 2002. 

‘The Politics of Love: Harlequin Romances and the Christian Right’, Journal of Popular Culture (Popular Culture Center, Bowling Green State Univ., OH) (35:4) [Spring 2002]: 75-87.

Davis, Sara N., 2004. 

'Values and the Romance Novel: Journeys of the Reader', in Education, Arts and Morality: Creative Journeys, ed. Doris B. Wallace (no publication details available here), pp. 45-62. Excerpt** [This paper "examines the ways in which reader responses are constructed in dialogue with cultural discourses. These provide the context when students read romance novels. Readers enter the process with many negative evaluations of romance novels which conflict with other prevalent discourses valuing romance for women."]

DeVries, Susan, Margaret Dunlop, Suzanne Goopy, Wendy Moyle, and Diane Sutherland-Lockhart, 1995. 

'Discipline and Passion: Meaning, Masochism and Mythology in Popular Medical Romances', Nursing Inquiry 2.4: 203-210. Abstract

Diekman, Amanda B., McDonald, Mary, & Gardner, Wendi L., 2000. 

'Love Means Never Having To Be Careful: The Relationship Between Reading Romance Novels and Safe Sex Behavior', Psychology of Women Quarterly, 24.2: 179-188. Abstract

Dillon, George L., 2007. 

'The Genres Speak; Using Large Corpora to Profile Generic Registers.' Journal of Literary Semantics, 36.2: 159-187. Part II looks at romance fiction. Abstract available via this page

Dixon, jay, 1987. 

'Fantasy Unlimited: the World of Mills and Boon', Women's Review, 21 (July): 18-19.**

Dixon, jay, 1999. 

The Romance Fiction of Mills & Boon 1909-1990s (London: UCL Press). Contents page and excerpt

Doubled Plots: Romance and History, 2003. 

eds. Susan Strehle and Mary Paniccia Carden (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi).

Douglas, Ann, 1980. 

'Soft-Porn Culture: Punishing the Liberated Woman.' The New Republic Vol.183, No.9 （August 30, 1980): 25-29.

Doyle, Marsha Vanderford, 1985. 

"The Rhetoric of Romance: A Fantasy Theme Analysis of Barbara Cartland Novels." Southern Speech Communication Journal 51: 24-48.

Dubino, Jeanne. 1993. 

“The Cinderella Complex: Romance Fiction, Patriarchy, and Capitalism.” Journal of Popular Culture, 27.3: 103-118.

Duder, C. J. D., 1991. 

“Love and the Lions: The Image of White Settlement in Kenya in Popular Fiction, 1919-1939.” African Affairs, 90.360: 427-38. First page.

Dudovitz, Resa L., 1990. 

The Myth of Superwoman: Women's Bestsellers in France and the United States. (New York: Routledge). Chapter 4 is 'The boundary between the romance and the bestseller: Harlequins, historical novels and family.'

E

Ebert, Teresa L., 1988. 

'The Romance of Patriarchy: Ideology, Subjectivity, and Postmodern Feminist Cultural Theory', Cultural Critique, 10: 19-57.

Edmondson, Belinda, 2007.

'The Black romance.' " Women's Studies Quarterly 35.1/2: 191-211.

Eike, Ann M., 1986. 

‘An Investigation of the Market for Paperback Romance Novels’, Journal of Cultural Economics, 10:1: 25-36.

Ehnenn, Jill, 1998. 

'Desperately Seeking Susan Among the Trash: Reinscription, Subversion and Visibility in the Lesbian Romance Novel', Atlantis, special issue on "Sexualities and Feminisms", 23.1: 120-127. Abstract

Emrys, A. B., 1994. 

"Magic Regencies: How Fantasy Forms a Hybrid." Popular Culture Review 5.1: 85-93.

Engler, Sandra, 2005. 

"A Career's Wonderful, but Love is More Wonderful Still" : Femininity and Masculinity in the Fiction of Mills & Boon. Tübingen: Francke.

Erwin, Lee. 2002. 

"Genre and Authority in Some Popular Nigerian Women's Novels." Research in African Literatures 33, no. 2: 81-99.

Esquibel, Catrióna Rueda, 1992. 

"A Duel of Wits and the Lesbian Romance Novel: Or, Verbal Intercourse in Fictional Regency England." in New Perspectives on Women and Comedy. Ed. Regina Barreca, (Philadelphia, PA: Gordon and Breach) pp. 123-133.

F

Fahnestock-Thomas, Mary, 2001. 

Georgette Heyer: a Critical Retrospective. Saraland,AL: PrinnyWorld Press. [Excerpt available via Amazon's "Look Inside!" feature. Index]

Faura, Salvador, Shelley Godsland, and Nickianne Moody, 2004. 

"The Romance Novel, or, the Generalisimo's Control of the Popular Imagination." in Reading the Popular in Contemporary Spanish Texts. pp. 46-58. (Newark, DE: U of Delaware P.)(About Corin Tellado, Spanish romance novelist) [Excerpt here.]

Felski, Rita, 1990. 

'Kitsch, Romance Fiction And Male Paranoia: Stephen King meets the Frankfurt School', Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media & Culture, 4.1.[2]

Finn, Geraldine, 1988. 

'Women, Fantasy, and Popular Culture: The Wonderful World of Harlequin Romance', Popular Cultures and Political Practices, Ed. Richard Gruneau (Toronto: Garamond Press), 51-67.** [A review by Herman Gray in Contemporary Sociology 19.1 (1990) describes Finn's article as "The real joy of the volume" and there are further details as follows: "Consistent with the Cultural Studies approach, Finn convincingly demonstrates how Harlequin texts and women's experiences of them express the contradictions that structure women's lives. She argues that women readers find refuge in the Harlequin novels, while at the same time such refuge helps to maintain and reproduce structures of domination that women experience" (74). Another summary of Finn's essay can be found in a review in the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 25.3, 248-249 (1990).

Flesch, Juliet, 1996. 

'A Labour of Love? Compiling a Bibliography of Twentieth Century Australian Romance Novels', APLIS, 9.3-4: 170-78.

Flesch, Juliet, 1997. 

'Not just housewives and old maids', Collection Building, 16.3: 119-124. [Describes the content of The Romance Fiction Collection in the University of Melbourne Library, 'the reasons for its establishment and some special aspects of its housing and bibliographical control. Also suggests some of the uses to which it may be put'.] Abstract

Flesch, Juliet, 2004. 

From Australia With Love: A History of Modern Australian Popular Romance Novels (Fremantle, W.A.: Curtin University Books).

Flesch, Juliet, 2005. 

‘Blushing Bride to Bush Matriarch: Women in the Fiction of Lucy Walker.’ Journal of Publishing. Australian Special Issue. 1 (October 2005): 37-52.**

Flesch, Juliet, 2007. 

'Love under the Coolabah: Australian Romance Publishing since 1990', in Making books: Contemporary Australian Publishing. Ed. David Carter and Anne Galligan. St. Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press. 279-285. ** Excerpt

Fletcher, Lisa, 2003. 

"Historical Romance, Gender and Heterosexuality: John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman and A.S. Byatt's Possession." Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies 7.1-2: 26-42. PDF

Fletcher, Lisa, 2004. 

‘“Mere Costumery”? Georgette Heyer’s Cross-Dressing Novels,’ in Masquerades: Disguise in English Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present, Eds. Pilar Sánchez Calle and Jesús López-Paláez Casellas, (Gdansk: University of Gdansk Press), pp. 196-212. Abstract

Fletcher, Lisa, 2008. 

Historical Romance Fiction and Heterosexuality: Heterosexuality and Performativity, (Ashgate). [Fletcher examines "the connections between popular “classics” by [...] Georgette Heyer, a selection of mass market historical romances published between 1980 and 2005," John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman and A.S. Byatt’s Possession.] Abstract, Index and Excerpt and Excerpts via Google Books.

Forbes, Curdella, 2006. 

'X Press Publications: Pop Culture, “Pop Lit” and Caribbean Literary Criticism: An Essay of Provocation', Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 4.1. [3]

Foster, Guy Mark, 2007. 

'How Dare a Black Woman Make Love to a White Man! Black Women Romance Novelists and the Taboo of Interracial Desire.' in Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels. ed. Sally Goade, (Newcastle, U.K.:Cambridge Scholars Pub.) pp. 103-128. Article about Foster's research and this item.

Fox, Pamela, 1994. 

'The "Revolt of the Gentle": Romance and the Politics of Resistance in Working-Class Women's Writing', NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 27.2: 140-160. Excerpt

Fowler, Bridget, 1991. 

The Alienated Reader: Women and Popular Romantic Literature in the Twentieth Century (Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf).

Franco, Jean, 1986. 

"The Incorporation of Women: A Comparison of North American and Mexican Popular Narrative." in Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture. Ed. Tania Modleski, (Bloomington: Indiana UP), pp. 119-138. [Especially Harlequin Romances; treatment of women; compared to photonovel. Franco says that "While there is an obvious risk in laying too much emphasis on a single example, I am now going to do precisely that" and chooses to take as a specific example of a Harlequin romance Moonwitch [sic] by Ann Mather [sic]."]

Franco, Jean, 2004. 

"Plotting Women: Popular Narratives for Women in the United States and in Latin America." in The Latin American Cultural Studies Reader. Eds. Ana Del Sarto, Alicia Ríos, and Abril Trigo, (Durham, NC: Duke UP) pp. 183-202.

Frantz, Sarah S. G., 2002. 

"'Expressing' Herself: The Romance Novel and the Feminine Will to Power," in Scorned Literature: Essays on the History and Criticism of Popular Mass-Produced Fiction in America. Eds. Lydia Cushman Schurman and Deidre Johnson. (Connecticut: Greenwood Press) pp. 17-36.

Frantz, Sarah S. G., 2008. 

'Suzanne Brockmann', Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice 2.2/3.[4]

Frantz, Sarah S. G., 2009. 

'Darcy’s Vampiric Descendants: Austen’s Perfect Romance Hero and J. R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood', Persuasions On-line 30.1. [5]

Frantz, Sarah S. G., 2009. 

"'I’ve tried my entire life to be a good man': Suzanne Brockmann’s Sam Starrett, Ideal Romance Hero." Women Constructing Men: Female Novelists and their Male Characters, 1750-2000. Ed. Sarah S. G. Frantz and Katharina Rennhak. (Lanham, MD: Lexington), pp. 227-247.

Frenier, Mariam Darce, 1988. 

Good-bye Heathcliff: Changing Heroes, Heroines, Roles, and Values in Women’s Category Romances, Contributions in Women’s Studies, no. 94. (New York: Greenwood Press). Contents page and excerpts

Frolund, Tina, 2007.

Genrefied Classics: A Guide to Reading Interests in Classic Literature. (Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited) Has a section on Romance Literature. [According to the abstract, "By identifying the genre characteristics of more than 400 classic fiction works, and organizing titles according to those features, it helps readers find the types of books they enjoy; and it helps you promote classics to teen (and adult!) readers."]

Fuchs, Barbara, 2004. 

Romance. The New Critical Idiom. Ed. John Drakakis. New York: Routledge. [See the chapter on "Romance and 'genre' literature," on pages 124-130]. Index and excerpt available via the "View Inside" feature at Routledge's website

G

Gagne-Hawes, Genevieve. 2006. 

"Anatomy of a Romance: Questioning genre conventions in the novels of Nora Roberts." Modern Mask 1.2.[6]

Ganguly, Keya. 1991. 

'Alien(ated) Readers: Harlequin Romances and the Politics of Popular Culture', Communication, 12: 129-50. **

Garton, Stephen, 2008. 

"'Fit Only for the Scrap Heap': Rebuilding Returned Soldier Manhood in Australia After 1945." Gender & History 20.1: 48-67. Abstract

Gill, Rosalind and Elena Herdieckerhoff. 2006. 

“Rewriting the Romance: New Femininities in Chick Lit?” Feminist Media Studies 6.4 (2006): 487-504.[7] Rpt. in LSE Research Online. 2007. LSE Lib., London School of Economics and Political Science. <http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/2514>.

Glass, E. R., and A. Mineo. 1986. 

"Georgette Heyer and the Uses of Regency." In Marucci, Franco (ed.); Bruttini, Adriano (ed.) La performance del testo, 283-292. Siena: Ticci.

Goade, Sally, 2007. 

'Introduction' pp. 1-11 and 'Understanding the Pleasure: An Undergraduate Romance Reading Community.' pp. 206-230 in Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing). Edited by Goade. [pdf of table of contents, introduction and first chapter here]

Goodwin, Sarah Webster, 1997. 

"Romance and Change: Teaching the Romance to Undergraduates.", Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres 3.1-2: 233-241.

Goris, An, 2009. 

"Romance the World Over," in Global Cultures. Ed. Frank A. Salamone. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. pp. 59-?? ** [Discusses the worldwide translation, production and distribution of Harlequins.] Abstract

Goris, An and De Geest, Dirk, 2010. 

"Constrained Writing, Creative Writing: The Case of Handbooks for Writing Romances.", Poetics Today 31.1: 81-106.

Greenwood, Alice. 1983. 

"Language Stereotypes in Mass Market Romances." CUNYForum: Papers in Linguistics 9: 157-173.

Greer, Germaine, 1971. 

The Female Eunuch (London: Paladin). [First published in 1970, there is a chapter on romance (pages 171-189in this edition) in which she critiques Georgette Heyer's Regency Buck, Barbara Cartland's The Wings of Love and Lucy Walker's The Loving Heart.]

Grescoe, Paul, 1996. 

The Merchants of Venus: Inside Harlequin and the Empire of Romance (Vancouver: Raincoast). [ Kathleen Gilles Seidel's "Half-Risen Venus", Paradoxa 3.1-2 (1997): 250-252 is a review of this book.]

Griswold, Wendy, and Misty Bastian, 1987. 

“Continuities and Reconstructions in Cross-cultural Literary Transmission: The Case of the Nigerian Romance Novel.” Poetics 16.3-4: 327-351. Abstract

Griswold, Wendy, 1989. 

"Formulaic Fiction: The Author as Agent of Elective Affinity." Comparative Social Research. 11: 75-130.