Romance Scholarship

Resources and bibliographies for academics.

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

• • Alberts, J. K., 1986. ‘The role of couples' conversations in relationship development: A content analysis of courtship talk in Harlequin romance novels’, Communication Quarterly, 34: 127-142.

Anderson, Rachel, 1974. The Purple Heart Throbs: The Sub-literature of Love (London: Hodder and Stoughton).

• • Assiter, Alison, 1988. ‘Romance Fiction, Porn for Women?’, in Perspectives on Pornography: Sexuality in Film and Literature, ed. Gary Day & Clive Bloom (New York: St. Martin’s), pp. 101-112.

Barrett, Rebecca Kaye, 2003. ‘Higher Love: What Women Gain from Christian Romance Novels’, Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 4. [1]

Belsey, Catherine, 1993. 'Writing About Desire', The Glasgow Review, 2. [2]

Burnett, Ann, & Rhea Reinhardt Beto, 2000. ‘Reading Romance Novels: An Application of Parasocial Relationship Theory’, North Dakota Journal of Speech & Theatre, 13. [3]

Cadogan, Mary, 1994. And Then Their Hearts Stood Still: An Exuberant Look at Romantic Fiction Past and Present (London: Macmillan).

• • Christian-Smith, Linda K., 1990. Becoming a Woman Through Romance (New York; London: Routledge).

• • Cohn, Jan, 1988. Romance and the Erotics of Property: Mass-Market Fiction for Women (Durham and London: Duke UP).

Crusie, Jennifer, 1997. ‘Romancing Reality: The Power of Romance Fiction to Reinforce and Re-Vision the Real’, [4], first published in Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres, 1-2: 81-93.

Crusie Smith, Jennifer, 1999. 'This Is Not Your Mother's Cinderella: The Romance Novel as Feminist Fairy Tale', in Romantic Conventions, ed. Anne Kaler and Rosemary Johnson-Kurek (see below), pp. 51-61. [5]

Darbyshire, Peter, 2000. ‘Romancing the World: Harlequin Romances, the Capitalist Dream, and the Conquest of Europe and Asia’, Studies in Popular Culture 23.1 [6]

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.

Dixon, jay, 1999. The Romance Fiction of Mills & Boon 1909-1990s (London: UCL Press).

Doubled Plots: Romance and History, Susan Strehle and Mary Paniccia Carden, eds. UP of Mississippi, 2003.

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

Dubino, Jeanne. 1993. “The Cinderella Complex: Romance Fiction, Patriarchy, and Capitalism.” Journal of Popular Culture, 27.3: 103-118.

Ebert, Teresa L., 1988. 'The Romance of Patriarchy: Ideology, Subjectivity, and Postmodern Feminist Cultural Theory', Cultural Critique, 10: 19-57.

Flesch, Juliet, 2004. From Australia With Love: A History of Modern Australian Popular Romance Novels (Fremantle, W.A.: Curtin University Books).

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.

Frantz, Sarah S. G. "'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, 2002. 17-36.

• • 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).

• • Grescoe, Paul, 1996. The Merchants of Venus: Inside Harlequin and the Empire of Romance (Vancouver, B.C.: Raincoast).

Hermes, Joke, 1992. ‘Sexuality in Lesbian Romance Fiction’, Feminist Review, 42: 49-66.

• • Jensen, Margaret Ann, 1984. Love's $weet Return: The Harlequin Story (Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press).

Jones, Ann Rosalind, 1986. ‘Mills & Boon Meets Feminism’, in The Progress of Romance: The Politics of Popular Fiction, ed. Jean Radford (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), pp. 195-218.

Juhasz, Suzanne, 1988. ‘Texts to Grow On: Reading Women’s Romance Fiction’, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 7:2: 239-259.

Juhasz, Suzanne, 1998. 'Lesbian Romance Fiction and the Plotting of Desire: Narrative Theory, Lesbian Identity, and Reading Practice', Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 17.1: 65-82.

Kramer, Daniela & Moore, Michael, 2001. ‘Gender Roles, Romantic Fiction and Family Therapy’, Psycoloquy 12,#24 [7]

Krentz, Jayne Ann, Ed. Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992).

Light, Alison. 1984. ‘Returning to Manderley – Romance Fiction, Female Sexuality and Class’, Feminist Review, 16: 7-25.

• • Margolies, David, 1982. ‘Mills & Boon -- Guilt without sex’, Red Letters, 14: 5-13.

• • Markert, John, 1985. 'Romance Publishing and the Production of Culture', Poetics, 14: 1-25.

• • Masteller, Jean Carwile, 1996. 'Romancing the Reader: From Laura Jean Libbey to Harlequin Romance and Beyond', in Pioneers, Passionate Ladies, and Private Eyes: Dime Novels, Series Books, and Paperbacks, ed. Larry E. Sullivan, and Lydia Cushman Schurman (New York: Haworth Press).

• • McAleer, Joseph, 1999. Passion's Fortune: The Story of Mills & Boon (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

• • McCaffery, Kate, 1994. ‘Palimpsest of Desire: The Re-Emergence of the American Captivity Narrative as Pulp Romance’, Journal of Popular Culture, 27.4: 43-56.

• • Miles, Angela, 1988. ‘Confessions of a Harlequin Reader: Learning Romance and the Myth of Male Mothers’, Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, 12, no. 1-2: 1-36.

Modleski, Tania, 1980. ‘The Disappearing Act: A Study of Harlequin Romances’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 5: 435-448.

Modleski, Tania, 1982. Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-produced fantasies for women (New York: Routledge).

Morgan, Paula, 2003. ‘ “Like Bush Fire in My Arms”: Interrogating the World of Caribbean Romance, Journal of Popular Culture 36.4: 804-827.

Mulhern, Chieko Irie, 1989. 'Approaches to Postwar Japanese Literature: Japanese Harlequin Romances as Transcultural Woman's Fiction', The Journal of Asian Studies, 48.1: 50-70.

• • Mussell, Kay, 1984. Fantasy and Reconciliation: Contemporary Formulas of Women's Romance Fiction (Westport CT: Greenwood Press).

North American Romance Writers, 1999. ed. Kay Mussell and Johanna Tuñón (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press).

Puri, Jyoti, 1997. ‘Reading Romance Novels in Postcolonial India’, Gender & Society, 11.4: 434-452.

Rabine, Leslie W., 1985. ‘Romance in the Age of Electronics: Harlequin Enterprises’, Feminist Studies 11.1: 39-60.

Radway, Janice A., 1983. ‘Women Read the Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context’, Feminist Studies, 9.1: 53-78.

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.

Regis, Pamela, 2003. A Natural History of the Romance Novel (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press).

Ricker-Wilson, Carol, 1999. ‘Busting Textual Bodices: Gender, Reading, and the Popular Romance’, English Journal, 88:3: 57-64.

Romantic Conventions, 1999, Anne K. Kaler and Rosemary E. Johnson-Kurek, eds. Bowling Green State University Popular Press.

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.

• • 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.

Snitow, Ann Barr, 1979. ‘Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different’, Radical History Review 20 (Spring/Summer 1979):141-61. 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. Republished in "Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader", ed. Mary Eagleton. New York: Basil Blacwell, 1986.

• • 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-??.

Thurston, Carol, 1987. The Romance Revolution: Erotic Novels for Women and the Quest for a New Sexual Identity (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press).

• • Timson, Beth S. ‘The Drug Store Novel: Popular Romantic Fiction and the Mainstream Tradition’, Studies in Popular Culture, 6: 88-96.

• • Treacher, Amal, 1988. ‘What is life without my love: Desire and romantic fiction’, in Sweet Dreams – Sexuality, Gender and Popular Fiction, ed. Susannah Radstone (London: Lawrence & Wishart), pp. 73-90.

Wardrop, Stephanie, 1997. 'Last of the Red Hot Mohicans: Miscegenation in the Popular American Romance', MELUS, 22. 2, Popular Literature and Film: 61-74.

• • Weisser, Susan Ostrov. 1994. 'The Wonderful-Terrible Bitch Figure in Harlequin Novels', in Feminist Nightmares: Women at Odds: Feminism and the Problem of Sisterhood, ed. Susan Ostrov Weisser and Jennifer Fleischner (New York: New York University Press), pp. 269-82.

• • Whissell, Cynthia, 1996. ‘Mate Selection in Popular Women's Fiction’, Human Nature, 7: 427-447.