A Natural History of the Romance Novel

A Natural History of the Romance Novel by Pamela Regis defines the 'romance novel' as a story that describes the courtship and betrothal of one or more heroines. It examines romance novels throughout history, identifying eight essential elements of the story and analysing several famous examples. It also talks about different types of romance novels throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

For a quite dense and academic book, this was very engaging, very interesting and surprisingly funny in places! I enjoyed all the analysis and came away wanting to read more romance of different types.