"Instead of defining modernism through its differences from mass culture, as critics like A. Huyssens or P. Bürger have tended to do, Hipsky yokes them together very convincingly." (Cahiers Victoriens et Édouardiens) "Readers will find in Hipsky's theoretically and historically astute work an important contribution to the ongoing remapping of the early twentieth-century literary terrain. It offers critics a model of how to write about popular fiction in a way that is rigorous and respectful but also alive to the pleasures to be found in texts that can still surprise readers with their modernity." (The Historian) "Martin Hipsky's book is a smart and vitally important analysis of the British romance novel and a model of incisive, balanced criticism. It requires us to rethink not only the romance genre, but also the profound ways that genre engages with modernism, melodrama, imperialism, and the history of publishing." "Martin Hipsky's definitive account of women's popular romance is at once a masterful history of the genre, a powerful critique of modernism, and a winning story of the beguiling literary personae that made romance such a scandalous triumph in this moment. Hipsky's knowledge of these writers is matchless, he is a visionary theorist, and his last pages are nothing short of a must-read rethink of modernism itself." (author of The Modern Novel: A Short Introduction)
