Romance of

John Holbo suggests that Bruce Robbins finds that popular commodity histories frequently overlap, narrative-wise, with the romance genre.  This reminds me that a frequent title for Victorian popular history is The Romance of...whatever.  A quick trip through the British Library catalogue reveals romances of military life, invention, colonization, the cotton industry (!), and on, and on, and on; I own a copy of Deborah Alcock's The Romance of Protestantism (1908), which I really ought to read at some point in the very immediate future.  Not that the title has quite lapsed from use--there are Romances of... being published even as we speak, no doubt--but the Victorians were particularly fond of it. 

"Romance" clearly doesn't signify something of the Jane Eyre variety; it has to do with adventure, exoticism, excitement.  (The cotton industry?!) It would be interesting to know if these books have anything in common beyond a catch-phrase; after all, such a title is in part a marketing ploy (much like the colors and cover images that today allow a browsing reader to identify chick-lit or thrillers). What sort of narrative might a Victorian reader expect, given the title?