Romantic women’s magazines were part of a broad cultural moment that saw a rapid expansion in the presence and accessibility of genre fiction, which easily attached feminine associations to the critical imaginary. Evan Hayles Gledhill’s essay analyses women readers’ investment in reading and authoring Gothic and romantic fictions for late eighteenth-century periodicals, such as the Lady’s Monthly Museum (1798–1828) and the Lady’s Magazine (1770–1832), to reveal how this fiction disrupted the traditional and gendered value systems that dominated Romantic publishing. In the process, Gledhill uncovers striking similarities between the textual communities that produced, or emerged in response to, this fiction and modern textual fan communities.