After decades of feminism and deconstruction, romance remains firmly in place as a central preoccupation in the lives of most women. Divorce rates skyrocket, the traditional family is challenged from all sides, and yet romance seems indestructible. In terms of its cultural representation, the popularity of romance also appears unchallenged. Popular fiction, Hollywood cinema, television soap-operas, and the media in general all display a seemingly bottomless appetite for romantic subjects. The trappings of classic romance--white weddings, love songs, Valentine's Day--are as commercially viable as ever. In this anthology of original essays, romance is revisited from a wide spectrum of perspectives, not just in fiction and film but in a whole range of cultural phenomena. Essays range over such issues as Valentine's Day, interracial relationships, medieval erotic visions and modern romance fiction, the relationship between the lesbian poet H.D. and Bryher, the pervasive whiteness of romantic desire, lesbian erotica in the age of AIDS, and the public romance of Charles and Diana.

Co-author of Feminist Readings/Feminist Text and author of Woman/Image/Text, Lynne Pearce is a Lecturer in English and Women's Studies at Lancaster University. Jackie Stacey is author of Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship. Formerly with the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University, she is currently with the Centre for the Study of Women and Gender at the University of Warwick