This essay seeks to demonstrate that Courtney Milan’s The Duke Who Didn’t (2020) is a “novel of ideas” which challenges readers to examine the concept of “historical accuracy” and the racism that may be perpetuated by its invocation. The historical context in which the novel itself emerged is also examined.

Faith, Love, Hope and Popular Romance Fiction (2020) explores romance novels from a theological perspective and suggests a new definition of the romance novel to complement other definitions which focus on structural elements: “modern popular romances are novels whose authors have assumed pastoral roles, offering hope to their readers through…[Read more]

E. M. Hull’s The Sheik is, unquestionably, a bestseller which left a mark on popular romance. It is debatable, however, whether “The Sheik is the ur-romance novel of the twentieth century.” Like many bestsellers it seems to have drawn on a variety of genres and its hybrid nature could account for its success while making it less than repre…[Read more]

Georgette Heyer is one of the most influential authors of popular romance novels and it is a mark of her continuing popularity that after her death she became the subject of two biographies: Jane Aiken Hodge’s The Private World of Georgette Heyer (1984) and Jennifer Kloester’s Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller (2011). However, as rep…[Read more]

Lingerie plays a significant role in many of Jennifer Crusie’s romances from Sizzle,“the first book I wrote even though it was published as my third,”through to Bet Me, which she has described as her “last classic romance.” Its function and symbolism varies depending on differences in context, colour, fabric and design: in Bet Me sexy underwear…[Read more]

Following Nancy Scheper‐Hughes and Margaret M. Lock, we suggest that each romance protagonist has three bodies: a physical body, a social body, and a political body. In applying this insight to the romance genre we focus on the socio‐sexual aspects of the social body and the socio‐political aspects of the political body, and draw on exist…[Read more]

This article looks at avian imagery in Celestina.