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Literature Glossary

Don’t be an oxymoron. Know your literary terms.

Over 200 literary terms, Shmooped to perfection.

Potboiler

Definition:

A potboiler is a shoddy and quickly written novel, poem, article, or other piece of writing. In other words, hack work written for money. An author's gotta eat, right? (Hence the word "potboiler"; these were all about keeping food on the stove.)

Tags: General, Genre