A widespread literary paradox
"Popular fiction" is by definition meant to appeal to a large, if not the largest, part of the reading public in literate societies. From the Bible (or even Homer) to Walter Scott and from Goethe to Raymond Chandler, the nature of this literary phenomenon presents a considerable range of variations according to the historical background of each era. What in particular seems to correspond to the term in question the last two or three centuries, and especially during and ever since the Industrial Revolution, consists mainly of a secondary, "unofficial" kind of literature with less, or, sometimes, no literary value (to the extent, of course, that such an attribute can be objectively assessed), easy to read and highly digestible, usually doomed to oblivion after a meteoric success. From this rule must, of course, be exempted the works which, due to their own exceptional merits, managed to resist time and establish themselves as classics, like those of Balzac, Dickens or Zola.
