Women's fiction
Parents: women - fiction - literature - novel
Related: amatory fiction - bodice ripper - "chick lit" - domestic fiction - romantic love - romance novel - love story - women - fiction - literature - escapist fiction - genre - genre fiction - popular fiction - women's magazines
Writers: Erica Jong
Theorists: Tania Modleski - Resa Dudovitz
Contrast: men's fiction
The Myth of Superwoman : Women's Bestsellers in France and the United States (1990) - Resa L. Dudovitz [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Serious consideration of bestselling women's fiction which falls outside the area of formula fiction is still quite minimal despite that fact that women's fiction in all its many forms, in addition to being a multi-million dollar international business, reaches an enormous number of women throughout the western world. --page 1
Definition
Women's fiction is a wide-ranging literary genre that includes various types of novels that generally appeal more to women than men. It is an umbrella term that covers mainstream novels, romantic fiction, Chick lit and other subgenres. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_fiction [Aug 2006]
Harlequin Enterprises Ltd
Harlequin Enterprises Limited is a Toronto, Ontario-based company that is the world's leading publisher of series romance and women's fiction. Owned by the Torstar Corporation, the largest newspaper publisher in Canada, the company publishes nearly 110 new titles each month in 27 different languages.
Harlequin was founded in 1949 by publishing executive Richard Bonnycastle and started out publishing a wide range of books from Westerns to Romances to cookbooks. In 1957 Harlequin began acquiring the rights to, and publishing, novels from Mills & Boon. Due to the huge popularity of this genre, by 1964 the company was exclusively publishing romance fiction and in 1971 it purchased Mills & Boon, forming Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited in the UK.
The company has continued to evolve over the years, expanding with offices in New York, London, Tokyo, Milan, Sydney, Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Athens, Budapest, Granges-Pacot and Warsaw, as well as licensing agreements in nine other countries. It has also expanded its range of books, offering everything from thrillers and commercial literary fiction under the MIRA imprint; Bridget Jones style 'chick lit' under its Red Dress Ink imprint; fantasy books under the LUNA imprint; and inspirational fiction published under the name Steeple Hill and Steeple Hill Café; male action adventure books under Gold Eagle imprint. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlequin_Enterprises_Ltd [Aug 2006]
Shaman Woman, Mainline Lady (1982) - Michael Horowitz & Cynthia Palmer
Shaman Woman, Mainline Lady: Women's Writings on the Drug Experience (1982) - Michael Horowitz & Cynthia Palmer
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Please avoid Sisters of the Extreme, which is a "reissue" of 1982's Shaman Woman, Mainline Lady -- cut, streamlined and reformatted beyond all recognition. Evidently, the authors took the edge off their book for a more "conservative" era
Includes Charlotte Bronte, Louisa May Alcott, Anais Nin, Maya Angelou, Billie Holiday, Nina Hagen, Carrie Fisher and others.
Cindy Horowitz is also known by the name Cynthia Palmer. Her maiden name is Istas; the father of her first two children was named Palmer. She is an author, wife of Michael Horowitz and mother of Winona Ryder. With her husband she is responsible for the creation of the world's largest library of drug literature, the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_Horowitz [Aug 2006]
Female filmmakers and the myth of romantic love
[...] Breillat's work belongs to a genre of films, directed by women, in which female protagonists peel back the seductive myths of romantic love in an attempt to discover the meaning of sexuality for themselves -- no matter how delightful or degrading their experiences. These films include: Carine Adler's Under The Skin, Davida Allen's Feeling Sexy, Bette Gordon's Variety, Jackie Burrough's A Winter Tan, Monika Treut's The Virgin Machine.--Barbara Creed
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