ABSTRACT
What do we mean by romance? It is not always produced and consumed exclusively by women; Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740), which I touched on briefly in Chapter 1, must surely be a member of the romance category (a 'classic' even, recalling Walter Nash's cline of quality that I referred to in Chapter 2, with 'popfiction' at one end and 'classics' at the other). And yet there is a romance marketing genre targeted specifically at women readers and written exclusively by women; or at least, presented as such, being published under women's names. In fact, there is a whole range of types of romance, which we should perhaps view as sub genres: the so-called 'bodice-ripper' novels to name just one. Mills & Boon alone have three major categories: Romance, Silhouette Sensation and Medical Romance. Other categories include Masquerade Historical (the 'Regency Romance' label) and Euroromance (a recent addition especially for the Year of European Unity).
