"I had no idea romance was so important!"

These words would have made my day under any circumstances, but the fact that they came from a highly regarded, tenured, full professor who had just come from the university committee that had been reviewing my dossier and considering me for promotion was no less than stunning. It also gave me hope, not just for the promotion (which I did get, by the way), but for the overall improving perception of the romance genre within the academy, and a growing certainty that romance is slowly on its way to being deemed "Worthy of Study" and of taking its place beside the other fiction genres already enjoying general scholarly scrutiny.

Of course, most of us already know that romance is important and has been for a long time. It is definitely worth studying, as the few pioneering academics who have dared to do so already know; it's just taking the rest of the world, and the scholarly set, in particular, a little longer to realize it.

But the academy isn't the only place where the romance historically has been ignored. The library world has been just as bad in this respect, perhaps even worse. However, things are changing for the better there, too. Just as scholars are beginning to produce articles, books, theses, and dissertations on the popular romance in increasing numbers, the supporting library literature is also gradually growing. Bibliographic guides, handbooks, bibliographies, biographical directories, and other types of reference sources targeting the genre are appearing, and more are on the horizon.

Naturally, all of this newfound interest is nice. But what does it mean, and does it really matter? That depends upon who's asking the question. The fact that Deborah Chappel discussed LaVyrle Spencer's romances in her dissertation ["American Romances: Narratives of Culture and Identity" (Duke University, 1991)] will make little difference to the average reader's enjoyment of Morning Glory or The Gamble; but to the academic librarian, the fact that a dissertation from a major institution on the popular romance novel even exists-and that it treats the genre seriously and respectfully-is important, indeed-not only for its own sake, but because of what it represents.
What we're really talking about her is the growth and development of a discipline-that predictable process by which information on a subject mores from idea to discussion topic to unpublished papers to published articles and books, and eventually into various reference sources. The more interest a topic generates, the more relevant literature it produces and the farther up the developmental chain it moves. Dissertations, theses, and reference works are key indicators in this process, representing in one instance an acceptance, or at least toleration, of the subject by the academy, and in the other the necessity to control, organize, and explain the increasing body of information being created. This is exactly what has been happening to the popular romance genre over the past few decades; and while we still have a long way to go, it only takes a quick look back to see how far we've come.

Predictably, romance scholarship focusing on writers now considered Literary (e.g., Austen, the Brontës, and others) is and has long been plentiful and can be traced back a number of years. However, studies of modern popular writers, particularly those written in previous decades, are typically less abundant and are often more generically critical. For example, Caesarea Abartis in "The Ugly-Pretty, Dull-Bright, Weak-Strong girl in the Gothic Mansion [Journal of popular Culture 13(Fall 1979):257-262] determines that the modern gothic reaches readers to be "passive and to hanker after mansions" and Kay Mussell in her early classic, "Beautiful and Damned: The Sexual Woman in Gothic Fiction" [Journal of Popular Culture 9(Summer 1975):84-89], shows that feminine sex and beauty often lead to corruption while domestic qualities lead to love and marriage. In a similar vein, much of the scholarship during the 1980s views popular romance as anti-feminist and supportive of the patriarchy. More recent studies, however, such as the recent issue of Para*Doxa that focus solely on the romance genre and, incidentally was edited by Kay Mussell ["Where's Love Gone? Transformations in the Romance Genre" Para*Doxa: Studies in World Literary Genres 3(1-2)1977] take a positive, more balanced, and less unilaterally dismissive view of the genre. Unfortunately, recent exceptions, such as Jeanne Dubino's "The Cinderella Complex: Romance Fiction, Patriarchy and Capitalism" [Journal of Popular Culture 27(Winter 1993):103-118] which trashes romance on the basis of six examples from the 1980s can always be found.

Although much of the literature focuses on the texts themselves, one of the earliest pieces of research in the field was Peter Mann's 1968 study of the reading habits of romance readers for Mills and Boon (The Romantic Novel: A Survey of Reading Habits, London: Mills and Boon Limited, 1969), which showed that readers were less homogeneous and more literate than previously supposed. Fifteen years later, Janice Radway's study, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), once again targets readers and draws some intriguing conclusions.

In 1992 a major breakthrough occurred when Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), a collection of articles by various writers and edited by Jayne Ann Krentz, was published by an academic press. One of the first anthologies of articles on the topic written by the writers themselves, this collection netted Krentz RWA's Industry Award, was both a best-selling book for the University of Pennsylvania Press and a winner of the Susan Brownmiller Award, and is fast becoming a modern classic of the genre.

Dissertations and theses, while not exactly plentiful, nevertheless show some interesting trends. Kay Mussell's "The World of Modern Gothic Fiction: American Women and their Social Myths" (University of Iowa, 1973) draws some traditional conclusions but is one of the earliest, and it does treat the romance seriously. Later papers such as Marian Starr's "Sweet-Savage Book: The Romance in America, 1855-1980" (1981) focused on the more sensational elements of the genre (e.g. rape-fantasy), and many concluded that romances were anti-feminist, pro-status quo, and generally bad for women. However, more recently, scholars such as Deborah Chappel (cited above), Lynn Coddington [ "Romance and Power: Writing Romance Novels as Women's Writing Practice," (University of California, Berkeley, 1997] and a number of others have provided a new and positive direction for the genre. A number of dissertations focus on romance reading in diverse cultures, and Radhika E. Parameswaran's "Public Images, Private Pleasures: Romance Reading at the Intersection of Gender, Class, and National Identities in Urban India" (University of Iowa, 1997) is just one example.

As the literature of the field grows, the reference sources needed to control and access that material also begin to appear. One of the earliest and most important author bio-bibliographies, Twentieth-Century Romance and Gothic Writers (Detroit, MI: Gale, 1982), now in its third edition and boasting a new name, Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers (London: St. James, 1994), is still proving useful, although it does have a British bias in coverage. Another early sources which was not updated, but was useful at the time because it was one of the few sources available was Eileen Fallon's Words of Love: A Complete Guide to Romance Fiction (New York: Garland, 1984). The latest addition to the biographical literature is Kay Mussell and Johanna Tuñon's North American Romance Writers: 1985-1995 (Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow, 1999), a source that includes nearly 50 North American writers, neatly complementing Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers. Two other plusses are an initial historical overview essay by Mussell and a much needed comprehensive bibliography of scholarly and popular materials by Tuñon.

As of this writing, to my knowledge, no book-length bibliographies devoted solely to romance scholarship exist; but several books do include extensive bibliographies. Of particular not is the one in North American Romance Writers: 1985-1995 by Johanna Tuñon mentioned above.

Guides to the genre, resources that outline the literature of a field and provide a wide variety of information for researchers on the topic, have long been a defining feature in a discipline's development. The earliest full-length book devoted to the romance genre was Kay Mussell's Women's Gothic and Romantic Fiction: A Reference Guide (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1981). It discussed a wide range of gothic and romantic fiction and focused primarily on scholarly and classic literature. A new edition of this is anticipated. Six years later, Happily Ever After: A Guide to Reading Interests in Romance Fiction (Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited, Inc;, 1987), a guide that focused more on the popular romance, was published; a revised edition with a new title, Romance Fiction: A Guide to the Genre (Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1999), will be released this spring.

Other reference sources important to librarians, as well as readers, are those that provide access to the romances themselves. Although there were several early bibliographies in limited use, the first of the widely available commercial indexes to do this was What Do I Read Next?: A Reader's Guide to Current Genre Fiction (Detroit: Gale, 1990-), an annual index (available in print and computerized versions) to all the fiction genres with a separate romance section. A spin-off, What Romance Do I Read Next?: A Reader's Guide to Recent Romance Fiction (Detroit: Gale, 1997) incorporates all the romance entries from the first seven annuals in one volume. Soon after, another computerized index, NoveList, joined the ranks.

In a field such as romance fiction, readers' advisory is an important issue; and as the genre grows and develops, librarians need sources to consult in order to be able to recommend books readers might enjoy reading. While both What Do I Read Next? And NoveList provide this kind of assistance, other readers' advisory sources are needed and several new series (e.g. Libraries Unlimited's forthcoming Genreflecting Advisory Series and a new series from the American Library Association) are being developed.

And finally, one of the more important indicators of the romance genre's maturations is the availability of credible reviews. Prior to 1994, mass market romances were not regularly reviewed by any mainstream publications. That changed, however, in May 1994 when Library Journal inaugurated its first romance review column. The column continues on a quarterly basis, and since then several other publications used by librarians to make collection development decisions (e.g., Publishers Weekly, Booklist) began to review romances more regularly-and more fairly.

Obviously, we're not there yet; but as you can see, we've come a long way. Despite the fact that the romance continues to be underrepresented in the scholarly and reference literature as compared with the other fiction genres (science fiction, fantasy, and mystery, in particular) and the quality of some of the research could be improved, the romance genre now has a definite presence in the scholarly and library arenas. Granted, we don't have everything we need, but we do have a healthy start toward building the kind of literary base that the discipline deserves. Now it is just a matter of time.

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Kristin Ramsdell, Librarian, California State University, Hayward writes a quarterly romance review column for Library Journal and the romance section of the annual fiction index, What Do I Read Next? Her latest book, Romance Fiction: A Guide to the Genre, has just been released. She is a frequent speaker and panelist on romance fiction and was named RWA Librarian of the Year in 1996.