Journal of Popular Romance Studies (Oct 2011)
Belles, Beaux, and Paratexts: American Story Papers and the Project of Romance
Abstract
The earliest attempts to mass-market romance fiction to American women readers in the late nineteenth century were more likely to fail than to flourish. This essay examines the first romance-centered dime novel and story paper series in order to reconsider this puzzling failure, which previous critics have often blamed on either the underdeveloped tastes or inadequate purchasing power of women readers. Paying special attention to Belles and Beaux, the first romance story paper issued by the publishing house of Beadle and Adams—and in particular to the reading environment shaped by the paratextual material appearing alongside the series’ popular love stories—I argue instead that the publishers and editors of the early romance periodicals lacked the courage of their own convictions, routinely diluting or even undermining the very ethos of romance that their publications were, in theory, designed to provide. Not until publishers gave women readers what they had been promised—periodicals unreservedly committed to the project of romance—did mass-marketed romance finally flourish in the U.S.
