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Reading for Pleasure
Working Women and the Popular Romance in Early Twentieth-Century Britain
Brief Description
Asserts that the popular romance offered new possibilities for young working women as social actors and media consumers in early 20th-century Britain. Young working women were the target audience for popular romance fiction and film in early 20th-century Britain, and as such, were often seen as...
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See moreA study of working womenβs experience of modernity as revealed through the popular romance in early 20th-century Britain, with a focus on girlsβ and womenβs magazines, bestselling novels by Elinor Glyn and E. M. Hull and their circulation in silent film culture, and womenβs writings on sexual and political agency.
A study of working womenβs experience of modernity as revealed through the popular romance in early 20th-century Britain, with a focus on girlsβ and womenβs magazines, bestselling novels by Elinor Glyn and E. M. Hull and their circulation in silent film culture, and womenβs writings on sexual and political agency.
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Description
Asserts that the popular romance offered new possibilities for young working women as social actors and media consumers in early 20th-century Britain.
Young working women were the target audience for popular romance fiction and film in early 20th-century Britain, and as such, were often seen as impressionable consumers of escapist fantasies. Reading for Pleasure complicates this narrative, revealing how women writers, readers, and audiences reimagined the romance.
Reading bestselling novels by Elinor Glyn and E. M. Hull, weekly magazines for girls and young women, and the writings of birth control campaigner Marie Stopes and socialist feminist Ethel Carnie Holdsworth, among others, Lise Shapiro Sanders offers an interdisciplinary study of early 20th-century popular romance fiction written by and for women, in the context of the star discourses and fan cultures of silent cinema. She examines how the popular romance resonated with the lives and experiences of young working women, exploring topics such as fashion, beauty, and consumption; desire, pleasure, and affect; sexuality and contraception; feminism, labour, and political activism.
By examining the historical foundations of the popular romance, Reading for Pleasure argues that we can glean important insights into young women's social and political agency, both in the early 20th century and today.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9798765141601
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 01 October 2026
Country: United States
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Illustration: 33 b&w illustrations
Audience: Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Width: 152.0mm
Height: 229.0mm
Weight: 300g
Pages: 248
About the Author
Lise Shapiro Sanders is Professor of English Literature and Cultural Studies at Hampshire College, USA. Her books include Embodied Utopias: Gender, Social Change, and the Modern Metropolis (2002), Consuming Fantasies: Labor, Leisure, and the London Shopgirl, 1880-1920 (2006), Bodies and Lives in Victorian England: Science, Sexuality, and the Affliction of Being Female (2020), and Temples of Luxury (2024). Reading for Pleasure was supported by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Also by Dr. or Prof. Lise Shapiro Sanders
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Reading for Pleasure
Asserts that the popular romance offered new possibilities for young working women as social actors and media consumers in early 20th-century Britain. Young working women were the target audience for popular romance fiction and film in early 20th-century Britain, and as such, were often seen as impressionable consumers of escapist fantasies. Reading for Pleasure complicates this narrative, revealing how women...Hardback$38500Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks
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