Anthology

McQuade, Donald and Robert Atwan, eds. Popular Writing in America: The Interaction of Style and Audience. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974, 647 p.

Includes selections from popular advertising copy, newspaper journalism, magazine articles, best sellers, and classics of fiction and nonfiction.

Secondary Sources

Austin, James C. and Donald A. Koch, eds. Popular Literature in America: A Symposium in Honor of Lyon N. Richardson. Bowling Green, Oh.: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1972, 205 p.

Sets out to correct cultural assumptions about popular literature by presenting "a kind of cross-section of literary scholarship on the popular literature of the past and present."

Cawelti, John G. Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976, 336 p.

Examines and defines the characteristics of popular formula fiction, including its artistic qualities, typical patterns, and cultural functions.

Heffeman, Thomas J, ed. The Popular Literature of Medieval England. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985, 330 p.

Collection of essays on popular medieval writings not ordinarily seen as the suitable subjects of literary scholarship, such as folklore, romance, and comic tales.

Hicken, Mandy and Ray Prytherch. Now Read On: A Guide to Contemporary Popular Fiction. Brookfield, Vt.: Gower Publishing Co., 1990, 328 p.

Contains entries on nineteen different popular subgenres of the novel—adventure stories, fantasies, gothic romances, thrillers, etc.—with basic information on the authors of each.

Holsinger, M. Paul and Mary Anne Schofield, eds. Visions of War: World War II in Popular Literature and Culture. Bowling Green, Oh.: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1992, 203 p.

Broad selection of essays on the literature of World War II seen from the perspective of the battlefield and of the women and children back home.

Inge, M. Thomas.Handbook of American Popular Literature. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988, 408 p.

Essays on the various subgenres of popular fiction—including detective novels, fantasy, westerns, science fiction, and others—intended "to provide access to the body of existing commentary and scholarship on several of the main forms of popular literature."

Irons, Glenwood, ed. Gender, Language, and Myth: Essays on Popular Narrative. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992, 318 p.

A range of contemporary essays collected to redefine the artificial division between what is commonly considered to be great literature and popular literature.

Klein, Marcus. Easterns, Westerns, and Private Eyes: American Matters, 1870-1900. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994, 216 p.

Discusses the prevalence and development of the ragsto-riches tale, the western, and the detective story in late nineteenth-century America, and the historical and cultural significance of the rise of these popular fictional forms.

Minor, Lucian W. The Militant Hackwriter: French Popular Literature 1800-1848—Its Influence, Artistic and Political. Bowling Green, Oh.: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1975, 177 p.

Reevaluates the influences of the popular novel and the melodrama on the development of French literature in the nineteenth century, maintaining that works in these genres had a profound effect on literary culture, as well as French social and political life.

Palmer, Jerry. Potboilers: Methods, Concepts, and Case Studies in Popular Fiction. London: Routledge, 1991, 219 p.

"Introduces and summarizes two decades of debate about mass-produced fictions and their position within popular culture," arguing that the literary distinctions between high and low culture be forgotten.

Peek, George S. "Folklore Concepts and Popular Literature: A Strategy for Combining Folklore and Literary Studies." Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin XLIV, No. 1 (March 1978): 25-29.

Applies the popular literature concepts of Axel Olrik's essay "Epic Laws of Folk Narrative" to the Chester cycle plays, contending that the laws are excellent tools for better understanding medieval drama.

Radway, Janice A. "Phenomenology, Linguistics, and Popular Literature." Journal of Popular Culture XII, No. 1 (Summer 1978): 88-98.

Employs a phenomenological method of inquiry in order "to make positive assertions about the difference between elite artistic expression and popular culture."

—. "The Utopian Impulse in Popular Literature: Gothic Romances and 'Feminist' Protest." American Quarterly 33, No. 2 (Summer 1981): 140-62.

Argues that popular literature, specifically the contemporary Gothic romance, while "essentially conservative in its recommendations of conventional gender behavior" nonetheless "permits the reader first to give form to unrealized disaffection before it reassures her that such discontent is unwarranted."

Richetti, John J. Popular Fiction Before Richardson: Narrative Patterns 1700-1739. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969, 274 p.

Investigates the tropes and types of the earliest forms of the novel.

Server, Lee. Over My Dead Body, The Sensational Age of the American Paperback: 1945-1955. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994, 108 p.

Survey of the popular escapist fiction—often sensationalistic, lurid, even "sleazy" paperbacks—from the decade 1945-1955, "a brief but gloriously subversive era in the history of American publishing."

Sturgin, Michael. "Innocence and Suffering in the Middle Ages: An Essay about Popular Taste and Popular Literature." Journal of Popular Culture 14, No. 1 (Summer 1980): 141-48.

Comments on the highly affective nature of most popular medieval spiritual texts, and the historical and cultural significance of this fact.

Yanarella, Ernest J. and Lee Sigelman, eds. Political Mythology and Popular Fiction. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988, 200 p.

Comprises essays by contemporary political scientists who "render political readings of themes from several popular genres populating today's mass fiction market."