"Organized around each decade of the postwar period, this book analyses novels written by and for women from 1945 to the present. Each chapter identifies a specific genre in popular fiction for women which marked that period, and provides case studies focusing on writers and texts which enjoyed a wide readership. Despite their popularity, these novels remain largely outside the 'canon' of women's writing, and are often unacknowledged by feminist literary criticism. However, these texts clearly touched a nerve with a largely female readership and so offer a means of charting the changes in ideals of femininity, and in the tensions and contradictions in gender identities in the postwar period."--Jacket.