EN
The paper states that the three types of romantic prose within the scope of popular literature of the 19th century (popular reading books) can be seen in terms of the sentimental novel development as precursors (nowadays the genesis of sentimental novel dates back to S. Richardsons´ Clarissa (1748) or Ch. Brontë´s Jane Eyre (1847) etc., however, ontologically speaking, the roots of this kind of writing are deeper). If the group of adventure-romance popular reading books feature elements that anticipate the earliest story layer of the social fabula of later romance novels, then the adventure-romance popular reading books for women of later provenance feature elements that incline towards the pattern of sentimental novel of the emancipation type. The shy, deceptively uninvolved or even marginalized „ugly duckling“ takes a form of a poor yet beautiful and virtuous orphan in the earlier books and her journey of transformation to a successful personality merges with courage, sensibleness and struggle for her own honour.