Add to ORKGLiterary genres are social institutions constituted by particular traditions of production and reception. But the boundaries of those traditions are deeply contested; some scholars lump the Newgate novel and Agatha Christie as "crime fiction," others insist that genres change ceaselessly, or displace each other at regular generational intervals. This essay gathers groups of texts linked by particular sites of reception, but also models the textual similarities between those groups in order to test conflicting theories about the rhythms of change that organize the history of genre. Note: this is a preprint version of an article to appear in Cultural Analytics. There will be a few minor differences from the published version, notably that ...