Romance novels, while wildly popular, are often “loathed by literary critics” and denounced as formulaic “hackwork” (Crusie). However, popular romance novels cannot be ignored; these books make up the largest market share of genre fiction, earning a total of $1.44 billion in 2022 (Curcic). In spite of this popularity, most university libraries have few romance novels or related nonfiction scholarly and non-scholarly sources about romance novels on their shelves.

At UD, lecturer Amy Krug and her English composition students set out to change that. In the fall of 2023, they curated a list of novels and nonfiction resources about the genre and worked with the University Libraries to build a circulating collection. Browse them here and use the links provided to view them in the library catalog.

This project was supported by a grant from the Experiential Learning Innovation Fund.

Sources:

Crusie, Jenny. “Defeating the Critics: What We Can Do About the Anti-Romance Bias.” JennyCrusie.com. Accessed May 15, 2023.

Curcic, Dimitrije. “Romance Novel Sales Statistics.” Wordsrated.com. October 9, 2022. Accessed May 10, 2023.