Cover of A Natural History of the Romance Novel

A Natural History of the Romance Novel

by Pamela Regis · 2003

+ Want to read

The romance novel has the strange distinction of being the most popular but least respected of literary genres. While it remains consistently dominant in bookstores and on best-seller lists, it is also widely dismissed by the critical community. Scholars have alleged that romance novels help create subservient readers, who are largely women, by confining heroines to stories that ignore issues other than love and marriage.

Read more

Pamela Regis argues that such critical studies fail to take into consideration the personal choice of readers, offer any true definition of the romance novel, or discuss the nature and scope of the genre. Presenting the counterclaim that the romance novel does not enslave women but, on the contrary, is about celebrating freedom and joy, Regis offers a definition that provides critics with an expanded vocabulary for discussing a genre that is both classic and contemporary, sexy and entertaining.

Taking the stance that the popular romance novel is a work of literature with a brilliant pedigree, Regis asserts that it is also a very old, stable form. She traces the literary history of the romance novel from canonical works such as Richardson's Pamelathrough Austen's Pride and Prejudice, BrontE's Jane Eyre, and E. M. Hull's The Sheik, and then turns to more contemporary works such as the novels of Georgette Heyer, Mary Stewart, Janet Dailey, Jayne Ann Krentz, and Nora Roberts.

Subject
literary criticismliterary criticismMore like thisLess of thishistoryhistoryMore like thisLess of thissociologysociologyMore like thisLess of this
Genre
romanceromanceMore like thisLess of this
Audience
adult
Length
medium · 224 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

BuyAmazonGoogle Books

BorrowOpen LibraryA library near you

MoreCompare pricesHardcover

Liked A Natural History of the Romance Novel? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance · 1992 Shares nonfiction, romance, books about
  2. Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels Sarah Wendell, Candy Tan · 2009 Shares nonfiction, romance, books about
  3. Dangerous Books for Girls: The Bad Reputation of Romance Novels Explained Maya Rodale · 2011 Shares nonfiction, romance, books about
  4. Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels Valerie Weaver-Zercher · 2013 Shares nonfiction, literary criticism, romance
See more recommendations →

“People who read A Natural History of the Romance Novel tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature Janice A. Radway · 1984
  2. Children's Literature: A Reader's History, from Aesop to Harry Potter Seth Lerer · 2008
  3. On Writing Romance: How to Craft a Novel That Sells Leigh Michaels · 2007
  4. Cheek by Jowl Ursula K. Le Guin · 2009

“If you want more of the same (literary criticism), start with these.”

  1. 2014 on Goodreads Various · 2014
  2. Studying the Novel Jeremy Hawthorn · 1992
  3. The Explicit History Pauline Albanese
  4. The Enchanter: Nabokov and Happiness Lila Azam Zanganeh · 2011

“If it was the romance that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels Sarah Wendell · 2011
  2. Cigarettes Are Sublime Richard Klein · 1993
  3. So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures Maureen Corrigan · 2014
  4. With Love and Squalor: 13 Writers Respond to the Work of J.D. Salinger Thomas Beller · 2001

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen Deborah Cartmell · 2007
  2. Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: The Art of Truth · 2001
  3. Free onlineFree St. Ives: Being the Adventures of a French Prisoner in England Robert Louis Stevenson · 1897
  4. Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Sarah Ponsonby, Anna Seward, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Katherine Bradley, Edith Cooper, Sarah Orne Jewett, Katharine Lee Bates, Helen Rose Hull, Michel de Montaigne, Henry Fielding, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Sigmund Freud, Charlotte Charke, Maria Edgeworth, Anne Lister, Constance Fenimore Woolson, Colette, Willa Cather, Henry Handel Richardson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Radclyffe Hall, Vita Sackville-West, Charles Baudelaire, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Marie Madeleine, Renee Vivien, Rose O'Neill, Clemence Dane, Djuna Barnes, Anais Nin, William Cullen Bryant, Jewelle L. Gomez, Charlotte Mew, Gertrude Stein, Amy Lowell, Katherine Mansfield, Angelina Weld Grimke, Virginia Woolf, H.D., Carson McCullers, Audre Lorde, William Rounseville Alger, Rita Mae Brown, Katherine Philips, Aphra Behn, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Eleanor Butler · 1994

Report a problem