The Bonkbuster

What were women reading in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s? This book presents a major study of the “bonkbuster,” an incredibly popular genre of women’s fiction in the late 20th century.

The bonkbuster was an explosively popular form of women’s popular fiction in the long 1980s. Authors like Jackie Collins, Jilly Cooper, Shirley Conran and Judith Krantz exemplified this genre, selling massive numbers of books over the course of their careers. However, where concurrent forms in media like soap opera and the romance novel have received critical attention, the bonkbuster has been mostly ignored by scholarship. The Bonkbuster: Women’s Popular Reading in the Long 1980s engages with these texts, their contexts, and their readers in order to explore the nature, impact, and history of the bonkbuster, offering the first in-depth critical definition of the genre.

Drawing on focus group and book club research conducted with British and Australian readers of bonkbusters in the 1970s–1990s, the volume explores the industrial and cultural history of the bonkbuster, investigating its lasting impact on readers. The books formed a significant part of sex and relationship education for many of them, providing their first notable textual representations of things ranging from sexism to the female orgasm. The Bonkbuster concludes with exploring where the bonkbuster has gone in the 21st century. As a literary genre, it might have disappeared from prominence; however, its influence remains deeply felt.

Author Biography

Amy Burge is Associate Professor in Popular Fiction at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is the author of Representing Difference in the Medieval and Modern Orientalist Romance (2016) and Managing Editor of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies.

Jodi McAlister is Senior Lecturer in Writing, Literature and Culture at Deakin University, Australia. She is the author of The Consummate Virgin: Female Virginity Loss and Love in Anglophone Popular Literatures (2020) and New Adult Fiction (2021), and Vice-President of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance.