Presumably there is an element of deliberate farce in Virago's decision to republish these three popular "romantic" novels of two generations ago, and to time their joint publication for Valentine's Day. Elinor Glyn's story is unconsciously hilarious, corn of the yellowest gold - particularly a scene in which one of her typical exotic vamps seduces a willing young Englishman (upper crust, of course) on a bed of roses. The Sheik supplied the theme for the Rudolf Valentino film, and is chiefly remarkable because the rather bohemian young heroine is seized and raped - repeatedly, it seems - by an Arab chief, whom she subsequently falls in love with and refuses to leave. Ethel M. Dell (who was married to a pig farmer, a fact which possibly explains the secrecy she maintained about her private life) sets her story in British India, with an involved plot in which the heroine is engaged to the wrong man but marries the right one. In view of ongoing feminist complaints about the female stereotypes created by male writers, and of male sado masochistic fantasies perpetuated in print. it should in fairness be pointed out that female novelists have done their share in creating this particular sexual (or sexist) climate. And also, so it seems, thousands of women readers swallowed it all like chocolates and asked for more and more; Elinor Glyn, in particular, made a lot of money out of her escapist, patchouliscented erotica.