The aim of this thesis is to discuss the ways in which mass-market historical romantic fiction (more specifically romantic fiction which takes place during the English Regency period) may contribute to the broader cultural markers for a given period of history. This conversation is situated within a broader context of historical fiction’s role in the assembly of popular historicity through mass-market appeal, popular culture. 

The thesis establishes modern Regency romance novels as descendants of the works of contemporary Regency author Jane Austen and are therefore understood as being relevant to Edward Said’s 1993 discussion of Austen’s work and cultural representations of empire in Culture and Imperialism. It also utilizes Bakhtin’s concept of the literary chronotope to describe the manifestation of a purely fictional sense of space and time which takes on the appearance of historical setting, thus influencing popular conception of a simplified, distilled and sanitized version of history.

The thesis traces the development of the modern historical romance novel (and historical romance erotica) throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century. It follows the trends and changes of historical representations and political ideology through the genre’s most significant influences from the early works of Georgette Heyer through the 1970s Bodice Ripper phenomenon and into the modern state of “BookTok” romance novels.