Philips D (2011) The empire of romance: Love in a post-colonial climate. In: R Gilmour & B Schwarz (Eds) End of Enpire and the English Novel Since 1945 (pp. 114-133). Manchester: Manchester University Press

This chapter researched the neglected subgenre of the colonial romance, and locates it in its post-war contexts. Bringing a post-colonial perspective to texts that were not generally seen to have addressed questions of colonialism, but that were framed by a post-colonial context, this article argues that the romance category is made up of a range of subcategories - understood by readers and publishers, but not necessarily recognised by cultural critics.

It is innovative in its research on the attitudes of the publishers of popular fiction towards inter-racial relationships and in the textual analysis that demonstrates that these fictions feminise a colonialist discourse. The research focused on texts that have been entirely forgotten and which have never before been subject to cultural analysis. This chapter is of use to post-colonial theorists, cultural historians and social historians in demonstrating that popular fictions are imbricated in the discourses of their period, and that representations of ideal femininity and masculinity were an important element in the naturalisation of a colonial ideology.

This chapter emerged out of a seminar and book proposal organised by colleagues at Queen Mary, University of London, which proposed to investigate the representation of the end of the British Empire through texts by British writers.