Tuesday, August 21, 2018

New: Encyclopedia of Romance Fiction

It's been a while since I added an item to the Romance Wiki's list of guides to the romance genre.
The Encyclopedia of Romance Fiction, ed. Kristin Ramsdell (Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood, 2018)
attempts to provide basic, relevant information on the popular Romance fiction genre in an accessible format for students and general readers who wish to know more about the topic. Subjects included cover the proverbial waterfront, ranging from detailed discussions of the various Romance subgenres and all that they entail to the nitty-gritty of the publishing and professional environment that is part of the genre - and everything in between. Each entry also includes a list of references and recommended resources for further research.
You can find an excerpt at Google Books and according to Amazon it will be published on 31 August.

The Encyclopedia's quite expensive, so I imagine it's most likely to be bought by libraries but it claims to be "the first encyclopedia solely devoted to the popular romance fiction genre" and was "written by contributors who are scholars, librarians, and industry experts with broad knowledge of the genre". Among those scholarly contributors are: