Review of From Australia with Love: A History of Modern Australian Popular Romance Novels, by Juliet Flesch

Abstract

When I'm told that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote to his publishers whingeing about the mob of women whose writings outsold his, my reaction is 'boo hoo'. Seems like nothing much has changed—two waves of feminism and one and a half centuries later, women writers and women's fiction still rank lowest in the genre pecking order. Thank goodness for Juliet Flesch. Her latest book (a 1995 bio-bibliography, Love Brought to Book, was her first) provides an extensive examination of the ignored sector of the literary marketplace: 'category' romance fiction, or, to you and me, Mills and Boon and its ilk. This book caters to the fan and the academic alike: Flesch's style is engaging, her research extensive, and her material fascinating; what more could a reader ask for?