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Abstract

“Mills & Boon” has become shorthand for “trashy” entertainment, yet little isknown about how the books are treated materially in their circulation. This articlereports on a project that followed the material lives and afterlives of 50Australian-authored novels published by Harlequin Mills & Boon between 1996 and2016. We analyze visual and textual data about these books collected via social mediato explore uses and values attached to category romance. First, we show that thebooks’ ongoing circulation is due both to their publishers’ practices, and to thebehaviours of genre insiders. Second, we note that most participants demonstrated“genre competence” and genre-based sociality, confirming the highly networkednature of the romance “genre world.” Third, we find that category romance isroutinely shelved apart from other books, explicitly marking them as distinctive.Finally, we argue that “shelfies” of romance collections undercut notions of trashby reframing them as treasure.

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Fletcher, L and McAlister, J and Temple, KR and Williams, K
Keywords:	Popular romance fiction, shelfies, Harlequin, Mills & Boon, social media
Journal or Publication Title:	Mémoires du livre/Studies in Book Culture
Publisher:	Groupe de recherches et d’études sur le livre au Québec
ISSN:	1920-602X
DOI / ID Number:	https://doi.org/10.7202/1066945ar
Copyright Information:	Copyright 2020 Groupe de recherches et d’études sur le livre au Québe. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Related URLs:	Google Scholar: Fletcher, L UTAS Profile: Fletcher, L UTAS Profile: McAlister, J Google Scholar: Williams, K UTAS Profile: Williams, K
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