Love and listening: the erotics of talk in the popular romance novel

Miriam J. Abelson. Men in Place: Trans Masculinity, Race, and Sexuality in America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020), 264 pp. ISBN: 9781517903510. Paperback, $25. Andrew Reilly and Ben Barry, eds. Crossing Gender Boundaries: Fashion to Create, Disrupt and Transcend (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2020), 225 pp. ISBN: 9781789381146. Hardback, $106.50. Jonathan A. Allan. Men, Masculinities, and Popular Romance (London: Routledge, 2019), 176 pp. ISBN: 9780815374077. Paperback, $31.95. Andrea Waling. White Masculinity in Contemporary Australia: The Good Ol’ Aussie Bloke (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2020), 222 pp. ISBN: 9781138633285. Hardback, $124.

Download Full-text

Literatura tradicional y literatura popular. Romance y corrido en México

Caravelle ◽

10.3406/carav.1995.2662 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 65 (1) ◽

pp. 143-157

Author(s):

Aurelio González

Keyword(s):

Popular Romance

Download Full-text

Elizabethan Popular Romance and the Popular Novel

10.1093/oso/9780199580033.003.0012 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

R. W. Maslen

Keyword(s):

Popular Romance ◽

Domestic Servants ◽

Competing Interests ◽

Popular Novel

This chapter concerns the work of writers who proclaim their commitment to a readership of commoners: craftspeople, tradesfolk, domestic servants, and others below the rank of the gentry. In doing so, the chapter reveals the voracious appetite of the marketplace of print for copy. It draws attention to the competing interests of printers and considers the question of how to make a living by writing under these circumstances. Writers experimented with different methods of turning the copy they produced into a steady income, but many failed. However, the attempt led to the extraordinary variety of prose pamphlets (short, inexpensive books) printed in the 1580s and 1590s.

Download Full-text

Marketing Love: Romance Publishers Mills & Boon and Harlequin Enterprises, 1930–1990

Enterprise & Society ◽

10.1017/eso.2020.76 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-31

Author(s):

DENISE HARDESTY SUTTON

Keyword(s):

Consumer Goods ◽

Marketing Strategies ◽

Direct Mail ◽

Popular Romance ◽

British Publisher ◽

Product Standardization ◽

University Of Calgary ◽

Standard Practices ◽

The University ◽

Book Publishers

When Harlequin Enterprises acquired British publisher Mills & Boon in 1972, the merged firm became the world’s dominant publisher of popular romance novels. Little is known, however, about the role that innovative marketing strategies played in the growth of these two romance publishing companies, especially their use of product sampling, direct mail, product standardization, and what was known at Mills & Boon as the “personal touch.” Through research in the Mills & Boon company archive at the University of Reading, the Grescoe Archive at the University of Calgary, as well as an analysis of company histories, trade publications, interviews, and marketing techniques, this study reveals how Harlequin and Mills & Boon took a different approach to product promotion than traditional publishers. Their innovation was to incorporate consumer goods marketing strategies, familiar to other industries, that disrupted and redefined standard practices of book publishers.

Download Full-text