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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]
 | |
| Founded | 2005 |
|---|---|
| Founder | James Jenkins Ryan Cagle |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | Richmond, Virginia |
| Publication types | Novels |
| Fiction genres | Gothic fiction Horror fiction Gay literature |
| Official website | valancourtbooks |
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]
Eventually the company "expanded into neglected Victorian-era popular fiction, including old penny dreadfuls and sensation novels, as well as a lot of the decadent and fin de siècle literature of the 1890s."[1]
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]
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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]
| Author | Work(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Eliza Parsons | Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) The Mysterious Warning, a German Tale (1796) |
Wolfenbach and Mysterious Warning are two of the "Northanger 'horrid' novels", seven Gothic novels lampooned by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey and once thought to be fictional titles of Austen's creation.[3][4][5][6][7] |
| Lawrence Flammenberg | The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest (1794) | Another of Austen's Northanger 'horrid' novels.[3][4][5][6][7] |
| Francis Lathom | The Castle of Ollada (1795) The Midnight Bell (1798) | 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] |
| Matthew Lewis | The Monk (1796) | 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] |
| Regina Maria Roche | Clermont (1798) | Another of Austen's Northanger 'horrid' novels.[3][4][5][6][7] |
| Eleanor Sleath | The Orphan of the Rhine (1798) | Another of Austen's Northanger 'horrid' novels.[3][4][5][6][7] |
| Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu | Carmilla (1871) | A lesbian vampire tale that influenced Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897).[1] |
| Anonymous | The Sins of the Cities of the Plain (1881) Letters from Laura and Eveline (1883) | 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] |
| Anonymous | Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal (1893) | 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] |
| Francis King | 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. |
| Walter Baxter | Look Down in Mercy (1951) | Celebrated novel about the World War II romance between an officer and an enlisted man.[1][19][20][21] |
| Rodney Garland | The Heart in Exile (1953) | The first gay detective novel, about a psychiatrist investigating his former lover's suicide.[1] |
| Kenneth Martin | Aubade (1957) | The story of a teenager's first love, written when the author was 16.[1] |
| Gerald Kersh | Fowler's End (1958) Nightshade and Damnations (1968) | Fowler's End is a Depression-era Dickensian comedy. Nightshade and Damnations is a collection of Kersh's short stories edited by Harlan Ellison. |
| Michael Nelson | A Room in Chelsea Square (1958) | A "camp" novel about a wealthy gentleman who lures an attractive younger man to London with the promise of an upper crust lifestyle.[1][22] |
| Gillian Freeman | The Leather Boys (1961) | The first novel to focus on love between young working-class men rather than aristocrats.[1] |
| Michael Campbell | Lord Dismiss Us (1967) | 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] |
| Michael McDowell |
| 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] |
| Michael Talbot | The Delicate Dependency (1982) | A celebrated vampire novel.[1] |
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