Bibliography P-S

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
• Academic Online Essays (not published in academic journals or volumes)
• Autobiographies and Biographies of Romance Authors
• Bibliography
  • Bibliography A-C - the first part of our bibliography of academic articles and books about romance.
  • Bibliography D-G - the second 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 T-Z - the final 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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P

Pagliassotti, Dru, 2010. 

'Better than Romance? Japanese BL Manga and the Subgenre of Male/Male Romantic Fiction', Boys’ Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre, Ed. Antonia Levi, Mark McHarry & Dru Pagliassotti (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland), pp. 59-83. Excerpt.

Pagliassotti, Dru, 2012. 

"Love and the Machine: Technology and Human Relationships in Steampunk Romance and Erotica," in Steaming Into a Victorian Future: A Steampunk Anthology, ed. Julie Anne Taddeo and Cynthia J. Miller (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow), pp. 65-8?. Excerpt

Paizis, George, 1987. 

'"Putting People First" or the contemporary romantic novel, critical discourse and ideology', La Chouette, no 18, March: 38-46. [La Chouette is published by the Department of French, School of Languages, Linguistics and Culture, Birkbeck College, University of London] **

Paizis, George, 1987. 

'That's Romance', Socialist Review, July: 24. **

Paizis, George, 1994-95. 

'Love, Ideology and Reality: the popular romantic novel and the reader', Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies, 3: 357-68. **

Paizis, George, 1998. 

'Category Romances - Translation, Realism and Myth', The Translator, 4: 1-24. Abstract

Paizis, George, 1998. 

Love and the Novel: The Poetics and Politics of Romantic Fiction (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan). Some details

Paizis, George, 2006. 

"Category Romance in the Era of Globalization: The Story of Harlequin." The Global Literary Field. (Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars)pp. 126-151.

Palmer, Paulina, 1998. 

‘Girl Meets Girl: Changing Approaches to the Lesbian Romance,’ in Fatal Attractions: Rescripting Romance in Contemporary Literature and Film, ed. Lynne Pearce & Gina Wisker (London: Pluto), pp. 189-204.

Parameswaran Radhika, 1999. 

'Western Romance Fiction as English-Language Media in Postcolonial India', Journal of Communication, 49.3: 84-105. Abstract

Parameswaran, Radhika, 2002. 

'Reading Fictions of Romance: Gender, Sexuality, and Nationalism in Postcolonial India', Journal of Communication, 52.4: 832-851. Abstract

Pattee, Amy S., 2011. 

Reading the Adolescent Romance: Sweet Valley High and the Popular Young Adult Romance Novel (New York: Routledge). Excerpt Review

Patterson, Janet, 1981. 

'Consuming Passion', Fireweed: A Feminist Quarterly, 11: 19-33. Reprinted in Fireworks: The Best of Fireweed, Ed. Makeda Silvera (Toronto: The Women’s Press, 1986), pp. 69-82.**

Patthey Chavez, GG, and L. Clare, M. Youmans,1996. 

'Watery passion: The struggle between hegemony and sexual liberation in erotic fiction for women.' Discourse and Society. 7.1: 77-106.

Pearce, Lynne, 2004. 

"Popular Romance and Its Readers." in A Companion to Romance: From Classical to Contemporary. ed. Corinne Saunders, (Malden, MA: Blackwell) pp. 521-538.

Pearce, Lynne, 2007. 

Romance Writing. (Cambridge: Polity Press). Historical treatment looking at romance broadly. Does touch on popular romance, but it is not the whole focus of the book. Abstract

Pearce, Lynne, 2011. 

"Romance and Repetition: Testing the Limits of Love." Journal of Popular Romance Studies 2.1.[1]

Pecora, Norma, 1999. 

"Identity by design : the corporate construction of teen romance novels, " in Growing Up Girls: Popular Culture and the Construction of Identity. Ed. Mazzarella, Sharon R., and Norma Odom Pecora (New York: P. Lang), pp 49-86. ** Excerpt

Pettigrew Brackett, Kim, 2000. 

“Facework Strategies among Romance Fiction Readers.” Social Science Journal 37.3: 347-360.

Philadelphoff-Puren, Nina, 2005. 

"Contextualising Consent: The Problem of Rape and Romance." Australian Feminist Studies 20.46: 31-42.

Philadelphoff-Puren, Nina, 2004. 

"The Mark of Refusal: Sexual Violence and the Politics of Recontextualization." Feminist Theory 5.3: 243–256. Abstract

See also Puren, below.

Philips, Deborah, 1985. 

'Marketing Moonshine', Women's Review 2 (December): 16-17. **

Philips, Deborah, 1990. 

'Mills and Boon: The Marketing of Moonshine,' in Consumption, Identity, and Style: Marketing, Meanings, and the Packaging of Pleasure, ed. Alan Tomlinson (London: Routledge), pp. 139-52. Excerpt here.

Philips, Deborah, 2000. 

'Shopping for Men: The Single Woman Narrative', Women: a Cultural Review, 11.3: 238-251. Abstract

Philips, Deborah. 2012. 

"The Empire of Romance: Love in a Postcolonial Climate." In End of Empire and the English Novel since 1945, 114-133. Manchester, England: Manchester UP, 2012.

Postma, Kathlene, 1999. 

'American Women Readers Encounter Turkey in the Shadow of Popular Romance', Journal of American Studies of Turkey, 9: 71-82. Online, unpaginated version. [The novel under discussion, 'Demetra Vaka's In the Shadow of Islam, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1911', is discussed in the context of the conventions of the romance novel, though it subverts them.]

Potter, Jane, 1997. 

'"A great purifier": The Great War in Women's Romances and Memoirs 1914-1918', Women's Fiction and The Great War, ed. Suzanne Raitt and Trudi Tate (Oxford: Oxford UP), pp. 85-106. Excerpt [The romance authors discussed are Berta Ruck and Ruby M. Ayres.]

Potter, Jane, 2005. 

Boys in Khaki, Girls in Print: Women's Literary Responses to the Great War 1914-1918 (Oxford: Oxford UP). [Chapter 3 is titled "'Putting Things in Their Right Places': The War in Romance Novels" and it considers "only a fraction of the hundreds of 'light fiction' books published between 1914 and 1918: My Heart's Right There (1914) by Florence Barclay, Khaki and Kisses (1915) by Berta Ruck, Richard Chatterton V. C. (1915) by Ruby M. Ayres, A Girl Munition Worker (1917) by Bessie Marchant, Before the Wind (1918) by Janet Laing, and Good Old Anna (1915) by Marie Belloc Lowndes" (90).] Excerpt

Press, Andrea L., 1986. 

'New Views on the Mass Production of Women's Culture', Communication Research 13.1: 139-149. [Review essay on Radway's Reading the Romance, Modleski's Loving with a Vengeance and two books on soap operas.] Excerpt.

Proctor, Candice, 2007. 

'The Romance Genre Blues or Why We Don't Get No Respect.' in Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels. ed. Sally Goade, (Newcastle, U.K.:Cambridge Scholars Pub.) pp. 12-19.

Puente, Sonia Núñez. 2008.

"The romance novel and popular culture during the early Franco regime in Spain: towards the construction of other discourses of femininity." Journal of Gender Studies 17, no. 3: 225-236.

Purdie, Susan, 1992. 

'Janice Radway, Reading the Romance', in Reading into Cultural Studies ed. Martin Barker and Anne Beezer, (London: Routledge), pp. 148-64.

Puren, Nina, 1995. 

'Hymeneal Acts: Interrogating the Hegemony of Rape and Romance', Australian Feminist Law Journal 5: 15-26. [Mentions Charlotte Lamb's The Sex War, London: Mills and Boon, 1988.]

Puri, Jyoti, 1997. 

‘Reading Romance Novels in Postcolonial India’, Gender & Society, 11.4: 434-452. Abstract

Q

Quilliam, Susan, 2011. 

' “He seized her in his manly arms and bent his lips to hers…”. The surprising impact that romantic novels have on our work', Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care 37.3: 179-181. Excerpt PDF

R

Rabine, Leslie, 1985. 

Reading the Romantic Heroine: Text, History, Ideology, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press).** [This is described in Williams and Freedman as a "study of the romantic quest from Tristan and Isolde to the Harlequin novel" (145). A chapter each is devoted to the Tristan/Isolde legend, Prévost's Manon Lescaut, Stendhal's The Red and the Black, Charlotte Brontë's Shirley, Alain-Fournier's Big Meaulnes and Harlequin romances.]

Rabine, Leslie W., 1985. 

‘Romance in the Age of Electronics: Harlequin Enterprises’, Feminist Studies 11.1: 39-60. Excerpt

Radford, Jean, 1992. 

"A Certain Latitude: Romance as Genre." in Gender, Language, and Myth: Essays and Popular Narrative. ed. Glenwood Irons, (Toronto: U of Toronto P), pp. 3-19.

Radhika, P., 2004-2005. 

"Narratives of Fractured Conjugality: Women’s Romance Novels in Kannada, 1950s-1960s." Journal of Karnataka Studies 2.1.PDF [As might be deduced from the title, not all of the novels under discussion are "romances" with happy endings: "As is characteristic of all romance novels, the formation of a couple as constituent of romantic love also figures in the post-50s women‘s novels. However, in contrast to the earlier women‘s novels, what is dramatised in the novels of Indira, Triveni, Vani and Anupama is that they significantly articulate the fracturing of the conjugal space and, except for the novels of Anupama (which I will discuss later), have tragic endings." (9)]

Radner, Hilary, 1995. 

Shopping Around: Feminine Culture and the Pursuit of Pleasure (New York: Routledge). [See Chapter 3, 'A Dream of Thee,' pages 67-104, which has two sections: 'The Erotic Gag: Reading the Category Romance' and 'Alibis and Cover Stories: Pornography, History, Race, and the Category Romance'.] Excerpt

Radway, Janice, 1981. 

'The Utopian Impulse in Popular Literature: Gothic Romances and "Feminist" Protest', American Quarterly, 33.2 (Summer, 1981): 140-162. [First page available here]

Radway, Janice A, 1982. 

'The Aesthetic in Mass Culture: Reading and the 'Popular' Literary Text', Linguistic and Literary Studies in Eastern Europe, Festschrift in Honor of Felix Vodicka, Ed. Peter Steiner and Ronald Vroon (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, B.V.), pp. 397-429. [Excerpt available from here]. [Takes gothic romances as examples.]

Radway, Janice A., 1983. 

‘Women Read the Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context’, Feminist Studies, 9.1: 53-78. [First page available here] [Rptd. in Ostrov Weisser, Women and Romance, pp. 323-341. **]

Radway, Janice A., 1984. 

'Interpretive Communities And Variable Literacies: The Functions Of Romance Reading', Daedalus, 113.3:49-73.

Radway, Janice A., 1991. 

Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press). First published in 1984. The 1991 edition contains a new introduction by the author.

Radway, Janice, 1994. 

'Romance and the Work of Fantasy: Struggles over Feminine Sexuality and Subjectivity at Century's End', in Viewing, Reading, Listening: Audiences and Cultural Reception, ed. Jon Cruz and Justin Lewis (Colorado: Westview Press), pp. 213-31. Reprinted in Feminism and Cultural Studies, ed. Morag Shiach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 395-???. **

Rani, Mohd. Zariat Abdul, 2012. 

"Islam, Romance and Popular Taste in Indonesia." Indonesia and the Malay World: 40.116 (2012): 59-73. Abstract

Rapp, Adrian, Dodgen, Lynda, and Anne K. Kaler, 2000. 

"A Romance Writer Gets Away with Murder." Clues: A Journal of Detection 21.1: 17-21.

Rasley, Alicia, 1999. 

'Paradox in Balance: Some Feminist Themes in Romance', originally published in North American Romance Writers, see above.[2]

Raub, Patricia, 1992.

"Issues of Passion and Power in E. M. Hull's The Sheik." Women's Studies, 21: 119-128.

Reep, Diana, 1982

The Rescue And Romance: Popular Novels Before World War I, Bowling Green Sate University Popular Press.

Reeves, Anne R., 2004. 

'Rosa: Fiction as Therapy,' Adolescents Talk About Reading: Exploring Resistance to and Engagement with Text. International Reading Association. 107-156. Excerpt [This chapter of the book explores reading for "escape" through the experiences of Rosa, who "was especially expert in reading romance novels and proud of her expertise" (107) and whose reading allowed her to "dwell on her own troubles, but at a distance made safe by the intervening presence of the story with the happy ending" (115).]

Regis, Pamela, 1997. 

'Complicating Romances and Their Readers: Barrier and Point of Ritual Death in Nora Roberts's Category Fiction.' Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres 3.1-2:145-154.

Regis, Pamela, 2003. 

A Natural History of the Romance Novel (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press). Excerpt [The book is the subject of a Roundtable section in the Journal of Popular Romance Studies 3.2 (2013).]

Regis, Pamela, 2011. 

"Female genre fiction in the twentieth century." The Cambridge History of the American Novel. Ed. Leonard Cassuto, Clare Virginia Eby and Benjamin Reiss. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 847-60. [The chapter includes "a definition of the romance novel, some categories to advance its literary analysis, and a first effort to place it in literary history, especially in foundational relation to the sentimental literature of the nineteenth century" (848). It also includes analysis of "seven twentieth-century American romances" (848), among which are Kathleen Woodiwiss's The Flame and the Flower, Jennifer Crusie's Bet Me, Beverly Jenkins's Indigo, Ann Herendeen's Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander, and Nora Roberts' Irish Thoroughbred.] Excerpt.

Regis, Pamela, 2011. 

“What Do Critics Owe the Romance? Keynote Address at the Second Annual Conference of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance,” Journal of Popular Romance Studies 2.1.[3] [There is a response by An Goris in the same issue of JPRS].

Regis, Pamela, 2013. 

'Ten Years After A Natural History of the Romance Novel: Thinking Back, Looking Forward', Journal of Popular Romance Studies 3.2 [4] [Also available as a pdf.]

Rholetter, Wylene, 2008. 

'Nora Roberts', Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice 2.2/3. [Formerly at [5]. This link no longer works but a pdf of the entire issue can be downloaded from [6]].

Ricker-Wilson, Carol, 1999. 

‘Busting Textual Bodices: Gender, Reading, and the Popular Romance’, English Journal, 88:3: 57-64. Excerpt

Rix, Robert W., 2009. 

'“Love in the Clouds”: Barbara Cartland’s Religious Romances', The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 21.2. Excerpt Archived version

Roach, Catherine, 2010. 

'Getting a Good Man to Love: Popular Romance Fiction and the Problem of Patriarchy', Journal of Popular Romance Studies 1.1.[7] [Also available as a pdf.]

Roberts, Sherron Killingsworth, 2002. 

'Meet Jessica and Elizabeth from Sweet Valley: Who Are the Female Role Models in Popular Romance Novels for Children?', Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (New Orleans, LA, April 1-5, 2002). 21 pgs. ERIC document ED470819.

Roberts, Sherron Killingsworth, 2010. 

"Twenty-five years and counting of Sweet Valley: Jessica and Elizabeth in romance novels for young children?" Journal of Research in Childhood Education 24.2:123-139. [Abstract and excerpt.]

Robinson, Lillian S., 1978. 

'Reading Trash', in Sex, Class, and Culture. Ed. Lillian S. Robinson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), pp. 200-222. Excerpt from a later edition ["Most of this essay will be focused on a contrast between the works of Jane Austen and those of Georgette Heyer" (202)]

Romantic Conventions, 1999. 

Anne K. Kaler and Rosemary E. Johnson-Kurek, eds. (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press). [Preview of parts of this available via Google Books.]

Rose, Suzanna, 1985. 

"Is Romance Dysfunctional?." International Journal of Women's Studies, 8.3: 250-265. ["Argues that among the forces that shape desire in women and men are the depictions of relationships and sexual expression in popular fiction. [...] It is contended that by encompassing primarily the courtship phase of relationships, the scripts provide little guidance relevant to maintaining long-term relationships."] Abstract

Ross, Catherine Sheldrick. 2009. 

"Reader on Top: Public Libraries, Pleasure Reading, and Models of Reading." Library Trends 57.4: 632-656. Abstract. Unpaginated version.

Ross, Marlon B., 2013. 

" 'What’s Love But a Second Hand Emotion?': Man-on-Man Passion in the Contemporary Black Gay Romance Novel." Callaloo 36.3 (2013): 669-687. Excerpt. [There's a short summary here.]

Ruggiero, Josephine A. and Louise C. Weston. 

'Sex-Role Characterization of Women in "Modern Gothic Novels"', Pacific Sociological Review 20: 279-300. **

Ruggiero, Josephine A. and Weston, Louise C., 1983. 

'Conflicting Images Of Women In Romance Novels', International Journal of Women's Studies, 6.1:18-25.

Russ, Joanna, 1973. 

'Somebody's Trying to Kill Me and I Think It's My Husband: The Modern Gothic', Journal of Popular Culture, 6.4: 666-691.

Ryan, Mary, 2011. 

‘Amongst Women: Male Romance Authors and Irish Chick Lit Author, Andrew O’Connor’, The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 1.2: 209-225. Abstract

Ryder, Mary Ellen, 1999. 

'Smoke and mirrors: Event patterns in the discourse structure of a romance novel', Journal of Pragmatics, 31.8: 1067-1080. Abstract ** [Analysis focuses on "the climax of a novel by Barbara Cartland."]

S

Sales, Roger, 1999. 

"The Loathsome Lord and the Disdainful Dame: Byron, Cartland and the Regency Romance." in Byromania: Portraits of the Artist in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Culture. ed. Frances Wilson, (Basingstoke, England; New York, NY: Macmillan; St. Martin's) pp. 166-183.

Salmon, Catherine and Donald Symons, 2003. 

Warrior Lovers: Erotic Fiction, Evolution and Female Sexuality (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). ** Abstract ["The stark contrasts between romance novels and pornography underscore how different female and male erotic fantasies are. These differences reflect human evolutionary history [...]. The authors focus particular attention on slash fiction [...] [and] argue that—despite some differences—slash fiction has much in common with romance novels."]

Salmon, Catherine, 2012. 

"The Pop Culture of Sex: An Evolutionary Window on the Worlds of Pornography and Romance." Review of General Psychology 16.2: 152-60. Abstract

Samuel, Barbara, 1997. 

"The Art of Romance Novels." Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres 3.1-2: 78-80.

Santaulària, Isabel, 2002. 

"The Fallacy of Eternal Love: Romance, Vampires and Love in Linda Lael Miller's Forever and the Night and For All Eternity." in The Aesthetics of Ageing: Critical Approaches to Literary Representations of the Ageing Process.(Lleida, Spain: Universitat de Lleida), pp. 111-126.

Schell, Heather, 2007. 

"The Big Bad Wolf: Masculinity and Genetics in Popular Culture." Literature and Medicine 26.1: 109-125. (Christine Feehan is the author addressed in this article). [8]

Schell, Heather, 2010. 

"The Love Life of a Fact." How Well Do "Facts" Travel?: The Dissemination of Reliable Knowledge. Ed. Peter Howlett and Mary S. Morgan. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP). ** [It's Chapter 16 and an unofficial version is available here.]

Schell, Heather, 2013. 

"Bringing the Mid-West to the Middle-East: An Analysis of a Harlequin Romance in English and Turkish, in The Silk Road of Adaptation: Transformations across Disciplines and Cultures, ed. Laurence Raw (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars), pp. 160-171. [9]

Schiffman, Leon G. and Steven P. Schnaars, 1981. 

"The Consumption of Historical Romance Novels: Consumer Aesthetics in Popular Literature." Symbolic Consumer Behavior. (Association for Consumer Research), pp. 46-51.[10]

Schwab, Sandra, 2012. 

'“It Is Only with One’s Heart That One Can See Clearly”: The Loss of Sight in Teresa Medeiros’s The Bride and the Beast and Yours until Dawn', Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 6.3: 275-289. Abstract and Excerpt

Scott, Alison M. 2002. 

'Romance in the Stacks; or, Popular Romance Fiction Imperiled', in Scorned Literature: Essays on the History and Criticism of Popular Mass-Produced Fiction in America, ed. Lydia Cushman Schurman and Deidre Johnson, Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture, 75 (Westport, CT: Greenwood),pp. 213-224.

Seale,Maura, 2007. 

'"I find some Hindu practices, like burning widows, utterly bizarre": Representation of Sati and Questions of Choice in Veils of Silk.' in Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels. ed. Sally Goade, (Newcastle, U.K.:Cambridge Scholars Pub.) pp. 129-147. Unpaginated version

Seidel, Kathleen Gilles, 1997. 

"Half-Risen Venus", Paradoxa 3.1-2: 250-252. [This is a review of Paul Grescoe's Merchants of Venus: Inside Harlequin and the Empire of Romance.]

Selinger, Eric Murphy, 2007. 

'Rereading the Romance', Contemporary Literature, 48.2: 307-324.[11] [This is a review article, critiquing earlier works on the romance genre (such as those by Radway and Modleski) and giving more favourable opinions about the newer works under review: Juliet Flesch's From Australia with Love: A History of Modern Australian Popular Romance Novels; Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty-First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels, edited by Sally Goade; Deborah Lutz's The Dangerous Lover: Gothic Villains, Byronism, and the Nineteenth-Century Seduction Narrative; Lynn S. Neal's Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction; Pamela Regis's A Natural History of the Romance Novel.]

Selinger, Eric Murphy and Sarah S. G. Frantz, 2012. 

'Introduction: New Approaches to Popular Romance Fiction,' New Approaches to Popular Romance Fiction: Critical Essays, ed. Sarah S. G. Frantz and Eric Murphy Selinger (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland), pp. 1-19. [Includes a brief history of the study of popular romance fiction.]

Selinger, Eric Murphy, 2012. 

'How to Read a Romance Novel (and Fall in Love with Popular Romance),' New Approaches to Popular Romance Fiction: Critical Essays, ed. Sarah S. G. Frantz and Eric Murphy Selinger (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland), pp. 33-46. [Includes analysis of Laura Kinsale's Flowers from the Storm.]

Selinger, Eric Murphy, 2012. 

'Nothing But Good Times Ahead: A Special Forum on Jennifer Crusie (Editor’s Introduction)', Journal of Popular Romance Studies 2.2 (2012).[12].

Selinger, Eric Murphy, 2013. 

'Rebooting the Romance: The Impact of A Natural History of the Romance Novel', Journal of Popular Romance Studies 3.2 [13] [Also available as a pdf.]

Shachar, Hila. 2011. 

"A Post-Feminist Romance: Love, Gender and Intertextuality in Stephenie Meyer's Saga." In Theorizing Twilight: Critical Essays on What's at Stake in a Post-Vampire World 147-161. Eds. Maggie Parke and Natalie Wilson. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011.

Shapiro, Joan, & Lee Kroeger, 1991. 

‘Is Life a Romantic Novel? The Relationship Between Attitudes About Intimate Relationships and the Popular Media’, American Journal of Family Therapy, 19.3: 226-236. ** Abstract

Shore, Z. Lesley, 2000. 

'Essay Review', Educational Studies 31.2: 132-145. [Abstract, includes the sentence: "The ubiquitous, aggressively marketed series romances that a girl reads in adolescence are read not as mere fantasy or entertainment but as a road map for life. This compelling romantic ideology channels girls narrowly toward heterosexuality and marriage." For similar ideas, expressed at greater length, see Shore's dissertation.]

Smith, Janet S. Shibamoto. 1999. 

"From Hiren to Happi-endo: Romantic Expression in the Japanese Love Story." In Languages of Sentiment: Cultural Constructions of Emotional Substrates, 131-150. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Benjamins. [Extensive excerpt available from Benjamins' website (click on the "Google Preview" button).]

Shibamoto Smith, Janet S., 2004. 

'Language and Gender in the (Hetero)Romance: "Reading" the Ideal Hero/ine through Lovers' Dialogue in Japanese Romance Fiction', in Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology: Cultural Models and Real People, ed. Shigeko Okamoto and Janet S. Shibamoto Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 113-130. ** Review

Shibamoto-Smith, Janet S., 2005. 

‘Translating True Love: Japanese Romantic Fiction, Harlequin-Style’ in Gender, Sex and Translation: The Manipulation of Identities, ed. José Santaemilia (Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing), pp. 97-116. ** Summary

Shibamoto Smith, Janet S., 2008. 

"Changing Lovestyles: Fictional Representations of Contemporary Japanese Men in Love." Positions 16.2: 359-87. First Page

Smith, Faith, 1999. 

"Beautiful Indians, Troublesome Negroes, and Nice White Men: Caribbean Romances and the Invention of Trinidad." in Caribbean Romances: The Politics of Regional Representation. ed. Belinda Edmondson (Charlottesville, VA: UP of Virginia) pp. 163-182. Excerpt

Snitow, Ann Barr, 1979. 

‘Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different’, Radical History Review 20 (Spring/Summer 1979):141-61. Excerpt Republished in Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality 1983., ed. Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell & Sharon Thompson (New York: Monthly Review Press), pp. 245-263. Excerpt published in "Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader", ed. Mary Eagleton. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986, of which an excerpt is available online. [scroll down the page to reach the beginning of the excerpt.] Republished in Ostrov Weisser, Women and Romance (see above), pp. 307-322.

Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. 2010. 

Reading Nora Roberts. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Excerpt

Sommer, Doris, 1991. 

Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). [The following two quotes may give an impression of the contents: "Romantic novels go hand in hand with patriotic history in Latin America. The books fueled a desire for domestic happiness that runs over into dreams of national prosperity; and nation-building projects invested private passions with public purpose" (7) and "the lovers must imagine their ideal relationship through an alternative society. Once they project that ideal as an image that looks like a wedding portrait, their union [...] becomes the mediating principle that urges the narrative forward like a promise" (18). Excerpt.]

Sonnet, Esther, 1999. 

"'Erotic Fiction by Women for Women’: The Pleasures of Post-Feminist Heterosexuality." Sexualities,2.2:167-187. [From the abstract pdf: "This article addresses the material construction of female heterosexuality through examination of the mass marketing of women’s pornography - ‘erotic fiction for women by women’ as exemplified by Virgin Publishing’s Black Lace imprint."]

Sonnet, Esther, 2001. 

"What the Woman Reads: Categorising Contemporary Popular Erotica for Women." Consuming for Pleasure: Selected Essays on Popular Fiction. Ed. Julia Hallam and Nickianne Moody. Liverpool: John Moores UP. pp. 246-267. pdf

Sonnet, Esther, 2002. 

"'"Just a book", she said ...': Refiguring Ethnography for the Female Readers of Sexual Fiction." The Audience Studies Reader. Ed. Will Brooker & Deborah Jermyn. London: Routledge. pp. 254-273.pdf

Spehner, Norbert, 1997. 

'L'Amour, toujours l'amour ...: The Popular Love Story and Romance: A Basic Checklist of Secondary Sources', Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres 3.1-2: 253-268.

Spender, Dale, 1986. 

"Male Romance." Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers Before Jane Austen (London: Pandora), pp. 152-169. [As the title of Spender's book indicates, this is not about modern romance fiction but Spender does mention Harlequin/Mills & Boon and discusses how "romance" has (a) become associated with women and (b) acquired a very low literary status. The title of this chapter reflects a subsidiary definition of "romance" as "picturesque falsehood": "we have in the containment of women, a male romance, a 'picturesque falsehood' constructed in male interest" (162). Some quotes from the chapter can be found here.]

Spigel, Lynn. 1985. 

"Detours in the Search for Tomorrow: Tania Modleski's Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women." Camera Obscura: A Journal of Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 13-14: 215-234.

Spillman, K. Elizabeth, 2012. 

'The "Managing Female" in the Novels of Georgette Heyer,' New Approaches to Popular Romance Fiction: Critical Essays, ed. Sarah S. G. Frantz and Eric Murphy Selinger (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland), pp. 84-98.

Stacey, Jackie & Lynne Pearce, 1995. 

'The Heart of the Matter: Feminists Revisit Romance', in Romance Revisited, ed. Lynne Pearce & Jackie Stacey (New York: New York University Press), pp. 11-45.

Stern, Barbara B, 1991. 

'Two Pornographies: A Feminist View of Sex in Advertising', in Advances in Consumer Research Volume 18. ed. Rebecca H. Holman and Michael R. Solomon (Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research), pp. 384-391. Unpaginated version from the Association for Consumer Research's website.

Stieg, Margaret F., 1985. 

'Indian Romances: Tracts for the Times', Journal of Popular Culture, 18.4: 2-15. ['the Indian Romance, flourished between 1890 and 1930. It was a romantic novel set in India, featuring Anglo-Indians (English expatriates living in India) as the leading characters.' (1985: 2)] Excerpt

Stoneley, Peter, 1999. 

'"Never Love a Cowboy": Romance Fiction and Fantasy Families', Writing and Fantasy, ed. Ceri Sullivan and Barbara White (London: Longman), pp. 223-235. [He argues that since "all desire is fantastical by its very nature" (223), romance is no more unrealistic than many other forms of fiction. He detects an "apparent incommensurability between sexual desire and family values" (226) in Silhouette's "Western Lovers" romances.]

Stotesbury, John A, 1994. 

"Language and Mindstyle in Anglophone Popular Romantic Fiction under Apartheid." Logos 14: 18-32.

Stotesbury, John A., 2004 

'Genre and Islam in Recent Anglophone Romantic Fiction', in Refracting the Canon in Contemporary British Literature and Film, ed. Christian Gutleben & Susana Onega, Postmodern Studies, 35 (Amsterdam: Rodopi), pp. 69-82. Abstract **

Stout, Diana, 2008. 

'Karen Robards', Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice 2.2/3. [Formerly at [14]. Unfortunately this essay appears to have been omitted from a pdf of the entire issue which can be downloaded from [15]].

Stowers, Eva, 2007. 

'City of Fantasy: Romance Novels in Las Vegas.' in Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels. ed. Sally Goade, (Newcastle, U.K.:Cambridge Scholars Pub.) pp. 198-205.

Struve, Laura, 2011. 

"Sisters of Sorts: Reading Romantic Fiction and the Bonds Among Female Readers." Journal of Popular Culture 44.6: 1289–1306. Excerpt

Sucatre, Conrad V., 2005 

Old School Romance (Vintage Romance Publishing).** [I have not been able to identify a place of publication, and clearly this is not an academic publisher. The author says that the book is about 'the romance writing industry as it existed prior to 1950. At my fingertips were the books and biographies of such authors as Faith Baldwin, Emilie Loring, Kathleen Norris, Temple Bailey, Elsa Barker and many others. I assembled all these facts into my book'.[16] ]

Swaffield, Audrey-Claire, 1981. 

"Paperbacks Promoting Passion! What Is Harlequin Really Presenting?." Canadian Woman Studies/Les Cahiers de la Femme 3.2: 4-6.