ABSTRACT
There are three main ways in which the trade attempts to overcome the uniqueness of books. Publishers, such as Mills & Boon, become identified with a certain kind of fiction. Some time between the early fifties and the early seventies a cultural revolution' took place in Britain, so that both the physical face of society and its deeper emotional and intellectual attitudes were profoundly changed. Since 1956 that heterogeneous mass of easy reading called popular fiction has come to occupy a new cultural position. But the work of articulating appropriate judgements across the variety that constitutes popular fiction is being forwarded by academics such as Clive Bloom, Scott McCracken and Mary Talbot, by critical series such as Insights and by discussion groups such as the Association for Research in Popular Fiction. As fiction comes to be seen as more and more closely tied to big business the prophets of 'commodity fetishism' award themselves honorary doctorates in perspicacity.
