For every woman who has hidden the cover of her book. Despite their popularity and profitability, romance novels have long been scorned and ridiculed as trashy literature. Is it the covers? Is it because the audience and authors are largely comprised of women? Or is it something else… The bad reputation of romance can be traced to surprising dictionary definitions, women’s evolving social roles, window taxes, the rising middle class, the cost of a ream of paper in the nineteenth century, the love match marriage, the status quo, the industrial revolution, and the ongoing tension between high and low art. Discover the origins of the stigma against popular romance novels by looking at examples of eighteenth and nineteenth century popular literature, those who read it and those wrote it. It has nothing to do with the covers and everything to do with revolution. These books were scorned because they were dangerous.