The publication date given for the ebook is 16 December 2024, but the print version gives a copyright date of 2025. I've chosen to use the date for the ebook.
In this volume, we take a more flexible approach to our corpus and choose to collectively define the novels we discuss as “romantic” rather than “romance fiction”, a decision which is supported by writers’ associations outside the United States (Romantic Novelists’ Association; Romantic Writers of Australia). Some of our contributors certainly identify Regis’s structural elements in the romantic novels they analyse, but we also recognise that much romantic fiction that explores love relationships does not necessarily end “happily ever after” with the romantic protagonists united and flourishing in love. More specifically, we refer to our corpus as “romantic historical fiction” to highlight the fact that the authors and novels examined do not simply use the past as a picturesque backdrop for a modern-day love story; rather, they attempt a serious representation of or engagement with history. Consequently, an optimistic love story might be incompatible with the specific historical events and circumstances recreated by the authors. In some cases, as we shall see, an unhappy ending works as a more plausible or ethically desirable solution for the protagonists’ love story. (2)
The publication date given for the ebook is 16 December 2024, but the print version gives a copyright date of 2025. I've chosen to use the date for the ebook.
Note that I do not include chapters which focus on texts which are not "romance." In the Introduction, the editors state that "This compilation of essays builds on the work of our previous co-edited collection, Conflict and Colonialism in 21st Century Romantic Historical Fiction: Repairing the Past, Repurposing History (2024)" (1). However, it should be noted that, as they state in their introductory chapter: