Valancourt Books is an independent American publishing house founded by James Jenkins and Ryan Cagle in 2005.[1][2] The company specializes in "the rediscovery of rare, neglected, and out-of-print fiction," in particular gay titles, Gothic novels and horror novels from the 18th century to the 1980s.[1]
Overview
Discovering that many works of Gothic fiction from the late 18th and early 19th centuries were unavailable in print, Jenkins and Cagle founded Valancourt in 2005 and began reprinting some of them.[1] Their list includes the "Northanger 'horrid' novels", seven gothic novels lampooned by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey (1818) and once thought to be fictional titles of Austen's creation.[3][4][5][6][7]
In 2012, Jenkins and Cagle realized that there was 20th century literature as recent as the 1970s or 1980s that was equally difficult to find, and began republishing such modern works, in particular those of gay interest or in the horror/supernatural genre.[1] Valancourt has reprinted many works last published in the 1980s by the now-defunct Gay Men's Press in their Gay Modern Classics series.[1]
Valancourt's reprint editions all have new introductions either by the original authors or by "leading writers or critics."[1]
Legal deposit
Valancourt refused to deposit its books with the Library of Congress as required by legal deposit rules and sued the Copyright Office.[8] It lost in first instance,[9] but won on appeal in August 2023.[10]
Latham's first novel, The Castle of Ollada, is the story of a young man trying to solve the mystery of the ancient castle. Midnight Bell is another of Austen's Northanger 'horrid' novels.[3][4][5][6][7]
The Monk, the sinister and violent tale of an increasingly destructive Spanish monk, was praised for its genius and simultaneously condemned for its lewdness, vulgarity and blasphemy by the most important critics of its day.[11][12][13][14] The novel was widely popular because the reading public had been told that the book was horrible, blasphemous, and lewd, and they rushed to put their morality to the test.[11]
A Victorian erotic novel about a male prostitute, set in London around the time of the Cleveland Street Scandal and the Oscar Wilde trials.[1]Letters from Laura and Eveline is its "appendix" or sequel.[2]
One of the earliest pieces of English-language pornography to explicitly and near-exclusively concern homosexuality, of unknown authorship but often attributed to a collaborative effort by Oscar Wilde and some of his contemporaries.[15][16][17]
Never Again (1947) An Air That Kills (1948) The Dividing Stream (1951) The Dark Glasses (1954)
Never Again is a "heartbreaking" novel based on the author's childhood; An Air That Kills is the story of a malaria-stricken writer who returns from a stint as a colonial administrator in India and forges a relationship with his orphaned nephew.[1]The Dividing Stream won the 1952 Somerset Maugham Award,[18] and in The Dark Glasses a married couple who have lost the spark in their marriage move to Corfu.
Story of two gay people at a boarding school: "a teenager unashamedly coming to terms with his identity and a tortured teacher who is unable to accept his own,"[1] published in the same year that homosexuality between consenting adults was legalized in the United Kingdom.[23]
The Elementals is a horror novel that Poppy Z. Brite has called "surely one of the most terrifying novels ever written," and which led Stephen King to proclaim McDowell "the finest writer of paperback originals in America today."[1][24]
^ abcdefFrank, Frederick S. (1997). "Gothic Gold: The Sadleir-Black Gothic Collection". Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture. 26: 287–312. doi:10.1353/sec.2010.0119. S2CID145338217.
^Nelson, James (2000). Publisher to the Decadents: Leonard Smithers in the Careers of Beardsley, Wilde, Dowson. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press.
^Gray, Robert; Christopher Keep (2007). "An Uninterrupted Current: Homoeroticism and collaborative authorship in Teleny". In Marjorie Stone; Judith Thompson (eds.). Literary Couplings: Writing Couples, Collaborators, and the Construction of Authorship. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 193. ISBN978-0-299-21764-8.
