Since the 1970s, romance novels have surpassed all other genres in terms of popularity in the United States, accounting for half of all mass market paperbacks sold and driving the digital publishing revolution. Romance Fiction and American Culture brings together scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and publishing to explore American romance fiction from the late eighteenth to the early twenty-first century. Essays on interracial, inspirational, and LGBTQ romance attend to the diversity of the genre, while new areas of inquiry are suggested in contextual and interdisciplinary...

Since the 1970s, romance novels have surpassed all other genres in terms of popularity in the United States, accounting for half of all mass market paperbacks sold and driving the digital publishing revolution. Romance Fiction and American Culture brings together scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and publishing to explore American romance fiction from the late eighteenth to the early twenty-first century. Essays on interracial, inspirational, and LGBTQ romance attend to the diversity of the genre, while new areas of inquiry are suggested in contextual and interdisciplinary...