war/armed forces

death

Bell, Kathleen

(1995) "Cross-dressing in Wartime: Georgette Heyer's The Corinthian in its 1940 Context " War Culture: Social Change and Changing Experience in World War Two Britain 151-159

Topic

historical romance

Bly, Mary

(2012) "On Popular Romance, J. R. Ward, and the Limits of Genre Study " New Approaches to Popular Romance Fiction: Critical Essays 60-72

Topic

J. R. Ward

fashion/clothing

Suzanne Brockmann

Broad, Katherine R.

(2013) "“The Dandelion in the Spring”: Utopia as Romance in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games Trilogy " Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers 117–130 DOI:10.4324/9780203084939

Topic

(2012) Desiring the east: a comparative study of Middle English romance and modern popular sheikh romance PhD, University of York

Topic

(2012) "Do Knights Still Rescue Damsels in Distress?: Reimagining the Medieval in the Mills & Boon Historical Romance " The Female Figure in Contemporary Historical Fiction 95-114

Topic

paratext

food, drink

fashion/clothing

Older and/or precursor texts (may not be "romance" as now defined)

Cadogan, Mary

(1994) And Then Their Hearts Stood Still: An Exuberant Look at Romantic Fiction Past and Present London: Macmillan

Topic

Victoria Holt/Jean Plaidy/Eleanor Burford Hibbert

Rita, pen name of Mrs. Eliza Margaret Humphreys

Elinor Glyn

Ethel M. Dell

Mary Lutyens/Esther Wyndham

Roberta Leigh/Rachel Lindsay

(2015) Readers' Advisory: There Seem to be More SEALs in Romance Fiction than in the US Navy, and if so, Why Does it Matter? Reference & User Services Quarterly 55.1:21-24 DOI: 10.5860/rusq.55n1.21

Topic

(2014) The Warrior Woman in Contemporary Romance Fiction Masters, Federation University Australia

Topic

Justine Davis/Justine Dare

(2014) The warrior woman in Harlequin’s Bombshell Athena Force series Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 3.3:335-349 DOI: 10.1386/ajpc.3.3.335_1

Topic

romantic suspense

Patthey-Chavez, G. Genevieve

Clare, Lindsay

Youmans, Madeleine

(1996) Watery Passion: The Struggle between Hegemony and Sexual Liberation in Erotic Fiction for Women Discourse and Society 7.1:77-106 DOI: 10.1177/0957926596007001004

Saint-Jacques, Denis

des Rivières, Marie-José

(2011) Le féminisme problématique d’un roman d’amour, Anne Mérival Recherches féministes 24.1:61–76 DOI: 10.7202/1006077ar

Topic

Older and/or precursor texts (may not be "romance" as now defined)

Delly

Dixon, jay

(1999) The Romance Fiction of Mills & Boon 1909-1990s London: UCL Press

Topic

Ebert, Teresa L.

(2006) Romance Novels, Class and Abu Ghraib Against the Current 121:

Topic

capitalism/business

(2015) Marry the Allies? Luciana Peverelli’s ‘True’ Romanzo Rosa in ‘Liberated’ Rome Italian Studies 70.2:228-248 DOI: 10.1179/0075163415Z.00000000097

Topic

Luciana Peverelli

Italy

national identity

socialism and/or communism

(2011) Men Conquer the World and Women Save Mankind: Rewriting Patriarchal Traditions through Web-based Matriarchal Romances Journal of Popular Romance Studies 1.2:

Topic

China

Fernández Rodríguez, Carolina

(2019) Chamorro WWII Romances: Combating Erasure with Tales of Survival and Vitality Journal of Popular Romance Studies 8:

Topic

Guam

languages

Fernández Rodríguez, Carolina

historical romance

(2021) "Nora Roberts’s Boonsboro Empire: Boosting Business through Romance, Invigorating Romance with Affective Capitalism " Romantic Escapes: Post-Millennial Trends in Contemporary Popular Romance Fiction 97-119

Topic

Nora Roberts/J. D. Robb

(2008) "Suzanne Brockmann" Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice 2.2/3:1-19

Topic

Suzanne Brockmann

race/ethnicity

Islam

romantic suspense

Frantz, Sarah S. G.

(2009) "I’ve tried my entire life to be a good man': Suzanne Brockmann’s Sam Starrett, Ideal Romance Hero " Women Constructing Men: Female Novelists and their Male Characters, 1750-2000 227-247

Topic

(2008) 'Fit Only for the Scrap Heap': Rebuilding Returned Soldier Manhood in Australia After 1945 Gender & History 20.1:48-67 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0424.2007.00501.x

Topic

(2023) Return Fantasies: Martial Masculinity, Misogyny and Homosocial Bonding in the Aftermath of Second World War Gender & History ONLINE FIRST:ONLINE FIRST DOI: 10.1111/1468-0424.12742

Topic

Gehrhardt, Marjorie

(2018) Losing Face, Finding Love? The Fate of Facially Disfigured Soldiers in Narratives of the First World War Litteraria Copernicana 3.27:75-89 DOI: 10.12775/LC.2018.032

Topic

Gómez Calderón, María José

(2007) Romancing the Dark Ages: The Viking Hero in Sentimental Narrative Boletín Millares Carlo 26:287-297

Topic

González-Allende, Iker

(2005) La novela rosa de ambientación vasca e ideología franquista durante la Guerra Civil española Revista Internacional de Estudios Vascos 50.1:79-103

Topic

marriage

Haddad, Emily A.

(2007) "Bound to Love: Captivity in Harlequin Sheikh Novels " Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty-First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels 42-64

Topic

(2009) Challenging the -isms: Gender and Race in Brockmann's Troubleshooters, Inc. Romance Novels Journal of Media Sociology 1.3/4:182-201

Topic

Hall, Glinda Fountain

(2008) Inverting the Southern Belle: Romance Writers Redefine Gender Myths Journal of Popular Culture 41.1:37-55 DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5931.2008.00491.x

Topic

historical romance

(2005) Margins of Desire: The Suburbs in Fiction and Culture, 1880-1925 Manchester: Manchester University Press

Topic

Publishing

readers

emotions

Hayton, Christopher J.

Hayton, Sheila

(2012) "The Girls in White: Nurse Images in Early Cold War Era Romance and War Comics " Comic Books and the Cold War, 1946-1962: Essays on Graphic Treatment of Communism, the Code and Social Concerns 129-145

Topic

Hayton, Christopher J.

Topic

(2015) In Sickness and In Health: Representations of PTSD in Post-9/11 Romance Novels albeit 2.1:

Topic

(2018) "Georgette Heyer: What Austen Left Out " After Austen: Reinventions, Rewritings, Revisitings 61-79 DOI:10.1007/978-3-319-95894-1_4

Topic

(2015) Wartime Ideology in 'The Thimble': A Comparative Study of Popular Wartime Romance and the Anti-romance of D. H. Lawrence Études Lawrenciennes 46: DOI: 10.4000/lawrence.236

Topic

(2010) “The Sheik Who Loved Me”: Romancing the War on Terror Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 35.4:993-1017 DOI: 10.1086/651044

Topic

(2015) An Imperialist Love Story: Desert Romances and the War on Terror New York: New York University Press

Topic

Jarmakani, Amira

(2021) "Explorations of the "desert passion industry" " The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction 252-266 DOI:10.4324/9781315613468-11

Topic

Jennings, Kathleen

(2021) "Heyer … in space! The influence of Georgette Heyer on science fiction " Georgette Heyer, History, and Historical Fiction 119-143 DOI:10.2307/j.ctv15d818n.13

Topic

(2012) Women's Writing, Englishness and National and Cultural Identity: The Mobile Woman and the Migrant Voice, 1938-1962 Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

Topic

Older and/or precursor texts (may not be "romance" as now defined)

Daphne du Maurier

(2008) Uncovering and Recovering the Popular Romance Novel PhD, University of Minnesota

Topic

happy ending

Stephanie Laurens

Kamble, Jayashree

(2012) "Patriotism, Passion, and PTSD: The Critique of War in Popular Romance Fiction " New Approaches to Popular Romance Fiction: Critical Essays 153-163

Topic

(2014) Making Meaning in Popular Romance Fiction: An Epistemology New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Kamblé, Jayashree

(2020) When Wuxia Met Romance: The Pleasures and Politics of Transculturalism in Sherry Thomas’s My Beautiful Enemy Journal of Popular Romance Studies 9: DOI: 10.70138/AWFD7941

Topic

(2010) ‘A Jazzed and Patchwork Modern’: ‘future’ girls and modern masculinities in the early popular romances of Berta Ruck Women's History Review 19.5:685-702 DOI: 10.1080/09612025.2010.509147

Topic

Berta Ruck

Jayne Ann Krentz/Amanda Quick/Jayne Castle

Kitchen, Veronica

(2018) Veterans and Military Masculinity in Popular Romance Fiction Critical Military Studies 4.1:34-51 DOI: 10.1080/23337486.2016.1235761

Topic

(2025) Female Labour at Bletchley Park: reality and (romantic) fiction Intelligence and National Security ONLINE FIRST:ONLINE FIRST DOI: 10.1080/02684527.2025.2506282

Topic

(1992) Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press

Topic

Older and/or precursor texts (may not be "romance" as now defined)

Laura Kinsale

psychology

Susan Elizabeth Phillips

feminism

Daphne Clair

Suzanne Simmons Guntrum

Diana Palmer

Kathleen Gilles Seidel

Labanyi, Jo

(2004) Romancing the Early Franco Regime: the Novelas Románticas of Concha Linares-Becerra and Luisa-María Linares UC Berkeley: Institute of European Studies: Occasional Papers Working Paper OP-13:

Topic

Concha Linares-Becerra

Luisa-María Linares

(2018) The Militarized Shapeshifter: Authorized Violence and Military Connections as an Antidote to Monstrosity University of Toronto Quarterly 87.1:196-213 DOI: 10.3138/utq.87.1.196

Topic

Maunder, Andrew

(2016) "Berta Ruck " British Literature of World War I: The Short Story and the Novella 35-39

Topic

Berta Ruck

Maynard, Lee Anna

(2008) LaVyrle Spencer Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice 2.2/3:1-17

Topic

(2025) Consent capital: From Romantasy’s “Alpha male archetypes” toward a new cultural theory in post-digital storytelling New Media & Society ONLINE FIRST:ONLINE FIRST DOI: 10.1177/14614448251375107

Topic

Rebecca Yarros

readers

O'Byrne, Patricia

(2008) Popular fiction in postwar Spain: the soothing, subversive novela rosa Journal of Romance Studies 8.2:37-57 DOI: 10.3828/jrs.8.2.37

Topic

work

María Mercedes Ortoll

María Morgan/Rosa María Cajal

Ángeles Villarta Tuñón

Patthey-Chavez, G. Genevieve

Clare, Lindsay

Youmans, Madeleine

(1996) Watery Passion: The Struggle between Hegemony and Sexual Liberation in Erotic Fiction for Women Discourse and Society 7.1:77-106 DOI: 10.1177/0957926596007001004

Peaty, Gwyneth

(2015) "Rock Hard: Gargoyles in Contemporary Gothic Romance " New Directions in 21st Century Gothic: The Gothic Compass 54-70 DOI:10.4324/9781315749419

Topic

(2024) Franquismo y guerra civil en dos novelas rosas: "Idilio bajo el terror" (1938) y "María Victoria" (1940), de Josefina de la Torre Philologica Canariensia 30:425-441 DOI: 10.20420/Phil.Can.2024.684

Topic

Laura de Cominges/Josefina de la Torre

Laura de Cominges/Josefina de la Torre

Pelegrina, Alicia

(2024) Los modelos femeninos en Idilio bajo el terror (1938) y María Victoria (1940), de Josefina de la Torre Ogigia. Revista Electrónica De Estudios Hispánicos 35:139–161 DOI: 10.24197/ogigia.35.2024.139-161

Topic

(1992) "Homeward Bound: Leisure, popular culture and consumer capitalism " Come on Down?: Popular Media Culture in Post-War Britain 9-45

Topic

capitalism/business

(2018) Spinsters, war widows, and wounded soldiers: the Great War novels of Berta Ruck Women's History Review 27.7:1085-1102 DOI: 10.1080/09612025.2018.1430003

Topic

(1997) ""A great purifier": The Great War in Women's Romances and Memoirs 1914-1918 " Women's Fiction and The Great War 85-106

Topic

(2005) Boys in Khaki, Girls in Print: Women's Literary Responses to the Great War 1914-1918 Oxford: Clarendon Press

Topic

Mary Ward/Mrs. Humphry Ward

Ruby M. Ayres

Berta Ruck

Florence Barclay

national identity

Potter, Jane

(2015) "‘Khaki and Kisses’: Reading the Romance Novel in the Great War " Reading and the First World War: Readers, Texts, Archives 29-44 DOI:10.1057/9781137302717_2

Topic

Potter, Jane Elizabeth

(1998) Boys in khaki, girls in print: women's literary responses to the great war, 1914-1918 D.Phil, University of Oxford

Topic

national identity

Ramos-García, María T.

(2021) "Paranormal romance and urban fantasy " The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction 141-167 DOI:10.4324/9781315613468-6

Topic

happy ending

genre definitions

(2017) Women and the 'War Machine' in the Desert Romances of E. M. Hull and Rosita Forbes Women's Writing 24.1:109-122 DOI: 10.1080/09699082.2016.1233773

Topic

(2020) Intimatopias and the queering of Australian war fiction Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 34.6:940-954 DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2020.1827371

Topic

Older and/or precursor texts (may not be "romance" as now defined)

Saint-Jacques, Denis

des Rivières, Marie-José

(2011) Le féminisme problématique d’un roman d’amour, Anne Mérival Recherches féministes 24.1:61–76 DOI: 10.7202/1006077ar

Topic

Delly

Saxena, Vandana

(2023) Afterlives of Colonialism: Nostalgia, Reader’s Response and the Case of Noel Barber’s Tanamera The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 58.2:340-358 DOI: 10.1177/0021989420971331

Topic

(2016) Happily Ever After for Whom? Blackness and Disability in Romance Narratives Journal of Popular Culture 49.6:1241–1260 DOI: 10.1111/jpcu.12491

Topic

race/ethnicity

African American romance

Serafine, Amelia

(2016) ""He Filled My Heart with Doubt": The Southern Belle's Love and Duty in the Civil War " Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom? 41-55

Topic

Older and/or precursor texts (may not be "romance" as now defined)

Augusta Jane Evans

death

(1998) Popular Vikings: Constructions of Viking Identity in Twentieth Century Britain PhD, University of York

Topic

Šmídová, Monika Markéta

(2024) “Oh, my friend, those weren’t angels”: Trauma, Recovery and Folklore in The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal and Spectred Isle by KJ Charles Journal of Popular Romance Studies 13: DOI: 10.70138/QXRQ7362

Topic

K. J. Charles

Sylvia Visconti/Mercedes Ballesteros Gaibrois

(2025) Female Labour at Bletchley Park: reality and (romantic) fiction Intelligence and National Security ONLINE FIRST:ONLINE FIRST DOI: 10.1080/02684527.2025.2506282

Topic

(2017) El ideal de masculinidad en la novela romántica falangista: análisis de Una mujer de veinte años de Mercedes Ballesteros Tonos digital: Revista de estudios filológicos 33:

Topic

Elena Puerto/Mercedes Formica

Chivers, Marian

Speed, Lesley

Tasker, Meg

(2014) The warrior woman in Harlequin’s Bombshell Athena Force series Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 3.3:335-349 DOI: 10.1386/ajpc.3.3.335_1

Topic

romantic suspense

Stollenwerk, Katie Elisabeth

(2020) “I’m a Nurse, Not a Woman”: The Historical Significance of the UWM Nurse Romance Novel Collection Master of Arts, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Topic

libraries/librarians

Marguerite Mooers Marshall

Ethel Hamill/Jean Francis Webb

Rose Dana/William Edward Daniel Ross

Rubie Saunders

Holden, Stacy E.

Tabol, Charity

(2015) In Sickness and In Health: Representations of PTSD in Post-9/11 Romance Novels albeit 2.1:

Topic

(2014) The warrior woman in Harlequin’s Bombshell Athena Force series Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 3.3:335-349 DOI: 10.1386/ajpc.3.3.335_1

Topic

(2012) German Writing, American Reading: Women and the Import of Fiction, 1866-1917 Columbus: Ohio State University Press

Topic

Germany

Wilhelmine Heimburg/Bertha Behrens

E. Marlitt/Eugenie John

Fanny Lewald

Wilhelmine von Hillern

Claire von Glümer

Ursula Zöge von Manteuffel

E. Werner/Elisabeth Bürstenbinder

Nataly von Eschstruth

metafiction

Moritz von Reichenbach/Valeska von Reiswitz, Gräfin von Bethusy-Huc

Charlotte Brontë

E. Juncker

Golo Raimund/Bertha [Heyn] Frederich

(2010) Historicizing The Sheik: Comparisons of the British Novel and the American Film Journal of Popular Romance Studies 1.1:

Topic

E. M. Hull

film/movies

Thompson, Anne B.

(2005) Rereading Fifties Teen Romance: Reflections on Janet Lambert The Lion and the Unicorn 29.3:373-396 DOI: 10.1353/uni.2005.0047

Topic

Janet Lambert

(1992) "Homeward Bound: Leisure, popular culture and consumer capitalism " Come on Down?: Popular Media Culture in Post-War Britain 9-45

Topic

capitalism/business

(2020) "Changing Attitudes to Others: Meljean Brook’s Riveted (2012) and its Context " Love, Language, Place, and Identity in Popular Culture: Romancing the Other 113-126

Topic

Zoë Archer

Wallace, Jennifer

(2022) "Army trenches and school benches: the Philippine-American War in the Sugar Sun series " The Routledge Companion to Romantic Love DOI:10.4324/9781003022343-17

Topic

Jennifer Hallock

Philippines

White, Bonnie

Pope, Johnathan H.

(2018) Spinsters, war widows, and wounded soldiers: the Great War novels of Berta Ruck Women's History Review 27.7:1085-1102 DOI: 10.1080/09612025.2018.1430003

Topic

(2021) "Georgette Heyer, Wellington’s Army and the First World War " Georgette Heyer, History, and Historical Fiction 162-186 DOI:10.2307/j.ctv15d818n.15

Topic

Georgette Heyer