Valancourt Books

{{redirect|Valancourt|the fictional character|The Mysteries of Udolpho}}

{{Infobox publisher

| image = Valancourt Books Corporate Logo 2014.png

| founded = {{Start date and age|2005}}

| founder = James Jenkins
Ryan Cagle

| country = United States

| headquarters = Richmond, Virginia

| publications = Novels

| genre = Gothic fiction
Horror fiction
Gay literature

| url = {{URL|valancourtbooks.com}}

}}

Valancourt Books is an independent American publishing house founded by James Jenkins and Ryan Cagle in 2005. 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.

Overview

Discovering that many works of Gothic fiction from the late 18th and early 19th centuries were unavailable in print, James Jenkins and Ryan Cagle founded independent American publishing house Valancourt Books in 2005, and began reprinting some of them.{{cite web |url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trebor-healey/early-gay-literature-redi_b_5373869.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000050 |title=Early Gay Literature Rediscovered |first=Trebor |last=Healey |work=Huffington Post |date=May 28, 2014 |access-date=May 31, 2014}}{{cite web |url=http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/08/21/james-jenkins-publishing-lost-gay-classics/ |title=James Jenkins: Publishing Lost Gay Classics |first=Tom |last=Cardamone |publisher=Lambda Literary |date=August 21, 2014 |access-date=September 7, 2014}} Specializing in "the rediscovery of rare, neglected, and out-of-print fiction", 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.{{cite web |url=http://www.valancourtbooks.com/jane-austens-northanger-abbey-horrid-novels.html |title=About Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey 'Horrid Novels' |publisher=Valancourt Books |access-date=September 7, 2014}}{{cite web |title=Northanger Canon |publisher=University of Virginia |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081016033056/http://www.lib.virginia.edu/small/exhibits/gothic/north.html |url=http://www.lib.virginia.edu/small/exhibits/gothic/north.html |date=13 November 1998 |access-date=14 June 2014 |archive-date=October 16, 2008 }}{{cite journal |first=Frederick S. |last=Frank |year=1997 |title=Gothic Gold: The Sadleir-Black Gothic Collection |journal=Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture |volume=26 |pages=287–312 |doi=10.1353/sec.2010.0119|s2cid=145338217 }}{{cite web|url=http://www.gothic.stir.ac.uk/guestblog/%E2%80%98i-should-like-to-spend-my-whole-life-in-reading-it%E2%80%99-the-resurrection-of-the-northanger-%E2%80%98horrid%E2%80%99-novels/|title='I should like to spend my whole life in reading it': the resurrection of the Northanger 'horrid' novels|last=Fincher|first=Max|date=March 22, 2011|publisher=The Gothic Imagination (University of Sterling)|access-date=April 22, 2016}}{{cite web|url=http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol33no1/ford.html|title=A Sweet Creature's Horrid Novels: Gothic Reading in Northanger Abbey|last=Ford|first=Susan Allen|publisher=Jane Austen Society of North America|access-date=April 22, 2016}} 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."

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. Valancourt has reprinted many works last published in the 1980s by the now-defunct Gay Men's Press in their Gay Modern Classics series.

Valancourt's reprint editions all have new introductions either by the original authors or by "leading writers or critics."

Legal deposit

Valancourt refused to deposit its books with the Library of Congress as required by legal deposit rules and sued the Copyright Office.{{cite news|first=Blake|last=Brittain|title=US appeals court curbs Copyright Office's mandatory deposit policy|url=https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/us-appeals-court-curbs-copyright-offices-mandatory-deposit-policy-2023-08-29/|newspaper=Reuters|date=August 29, 2023|access-date=August 31, 2023}} It lost in first instance,{{cite web|url=https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7672448/valancourt-books-llc-v-perlmutter/|title=Valancourt Books, LLC v. Perlmutter|website=Court Listener|access-date=August 31, 2023}} but won on appeal in August 2023.{{cite web|url=https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/9423047/valancourt-books-llc-v-merrick-garland/|title=Valancourt Books, LLC v. Merrick Garland, 21-5203 (D.C. Cir. 2023)|website=Court Listener|access-date=August 31, 2023}}

Notable titles

class="wikitable" ! width="15%" \| Author ! width="25%" \| Work(s) ! width="60%" \| 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.
Lawrence Flammenberg	The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest (1794)	Another of Austen's Northanger 'horrid' novels.
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.
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.{{cite book\|last=Peck\|first=Louis\|title=A Life of Matthew G. Lewis\|url=https://archive.org/details/lifeofmatthewgle0000peck\|url-access=registration\|year=1961\|publisher=Harvard University Press \|location=Cambridge, MA\|pages=23–25, 27–28}}{{cite book \|last=Coleridge \|first=Samuel Taylor \|author-link=Samuel Taylor Coleridge \|chapter=Review of The Monk by Matthew Lewis \|title=The Norton Anthology of English Literature \|edition=8th \|volume=D \|editor1-first=Stephen \|editor1-last=Greenblatt \|editor2-first=M. H. \|editor2-last=Abrams \|location=New York \|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company \|year=2006 \|pages=603–606}}{{cite book\|last=Irwin\|first=Joseph\|title=M.G. "Monk" Lewis\|year=1976\|publisher=Twayne Publishers\|location=Boston\|isbn=0-8057-6670-7\|pages=[https://archive.org/details/mgmonklewis0000irwi/page/46 46, 48]\|url=https://archive.org/details/mgmonklewis0000irwi/page/46}}{{cite book\|last=Parreaux\|first=André\|title=The Publication of The Monk\|url=https://archive.org/details/publicationofmon0000parr\|url-access=registration\|year=1960\|publisher=Librairie Marcel Didier\|location=Paris\|page=[https://archive.org/details/publicationofmon0000parr/page/75 75]}} 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.
Regina Maria Roche	Clermont (1798)	Another of Austen's Northanger 'horrid' novels.
Eleanor Sleath	The Orphan of the Rhine (1798)	Another of Austen's Northanger 'horrid' novels.
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu	Carmilla (1871)	A lesbian vampire tale that influenced Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897).
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. Letters from Laura and Eveline is its "appendix" or sequel.
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.{{cite book \|last=Nelson \|first=James \|title=Publisher to the Decadents: Leonard Smithers in the Careers of Beardsley, Wilde, Dowson \|location=Philadelphia \|publisher=Pennsylvania State University Press \|year=2000}}{{cite book \|first=Robert \|last=Gray \|author2= Christopher Keep \|chapter=An Uninterrupted Current: Homoeroticism and collaborative authorship in Teleny \|editor1=Marjorie Stone \|editor2=Judith Thompson \|title=Literary Couplings: Writing Couples, Collaborators, and the Construction of Authorship \|publisher=University of Wisconsin Press \|year=2007 \|isbn=978-0-299-21764-8 \|page=193}}{{cite book \|first=Edouard \|last=Roditi \|title=Oscar Wilde \|publisher=New Directions Publishing \|year=1986 \|isbn=0-8112-0995-4 \|page=[https://archive.org/details/oscarwilde00rodi_gw4/page/168 168] \|url-access=registration \|url=https://archive.org/details/oscarwilde00rodi_gw4/page/168 }}
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. The Dividing Stream won the 1952 Somerset Maugham Award,{{cite web \|url=http://www.societyofauthors.org/somerset-maugham-past-winners \|title=Somerset Maugham Award: Past Winners \|access-date=June 15, 2014 \|publisher=The Society of Authors \|archive-date=June 26, 2016 \|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160626045958/http://www.societyofauthors.org/somerset-maugham-past-winners \|url-status=dead }} 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.{{cite magazine\|title=Books: Man Under Pressure\|magazine=Time\|date=March 17, 1952\|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,816164,00.html\|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080127070658/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,816164,00.html\|url-status=dead\|archive-date=January 27, 2008\|access-date=June 13, 2014}}{{cite news\|last=Granger\|first=Derek\|title=Obituary: Fergus Provan\|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-fergus-provan-1247639.html\|newspaper=The Independent\|date=August 28, 1997\|access-date=January 10, 2013}}{{cite journal\|last=Peyre\|first=Henri\|date=Autumn 1956\|title=The Most Neglected Books of the Past Twenty-Five Years Selected by Writers, Scholars and Critics\|journal=The American Scholar\|publisher=Phi Beta Kappa Society\|volume=25\|issue=4\|page=492\|jstor=41208189}}
Rodney Garland	The Heart in Exile (1953)	The first gay detective novel, about a psychiatrist investigating his former lover's suicide.
Kenneth Martin	Aubade (1957)	The story of a teenager's first love, written when the author was 16.
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.{{cite web \|url=http://www.lambdaliterary.org/reviews/06/26/a-room-in-chelsea-square-by-michael-nelson/ \|title=A Room in Chelsea Square by Michael Nelson \|first=Steven \|last=Cordova \|publisher=Lambda Literary \|date=June 26, 2014 \|access-date=September 7, 2014}}
Gillian Freeman	The Leather Boys (1961)	The first novel to focus on love between young working-class men rather than aristocrats. It was adapted into the 1964 film The Leather Boys.{{cite web \|first=Harrison \|last=Smith \|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/gillian-freeman-whose-novel-leather-boys-was-a-gay-landmark-dies-at-89/2019/03/11/9ee08e52-4407-11e9-aaf8-4512a6fe3439_story.html \|title=Gillian Freeman, Whose Novel Leather Boys Was a Gay Landmark, Dies at 89 \|website=The Washington Post \|date=11 March 2019 \|access-date=13 June 2025}}
Robin Maugham	The Wrong People (1967)	Arnold Turner, a repressed English schoolmaster on holiday in Tangier, gives in to his long-suppressed homosexual desires and subsequently becomes embroiled in a dangerous sex trafficking scheme devised by a wealthy and manipulative American expatriate, Ewing Baird.{{Cite web\|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/05/09/archives/the-wrong-people-by-robin-maugham-273-pp-new-york-mcgrawhill-book.html\|title=Being Knocked About\|first=Auberon\|last=Waugh\|date=May 9, 1971\|newspaper=The New York Times\|page=38\|access-date=June 5, 2025}}{{Cite web\|url=https://deadline.com/2019/12/robin-maugham-gay-novel-the-wrong-people-sal-mineo-movie-adaptation-1202801274/\|title=Robin Maugham Novel The Wrong People, Once Optioned by Sal Mineo, Adapted for Screen 50 Years On\|first=Andreas\|last=Wiseman\|date=5 December 2019\|website=Deadline Hollywood\|access-date=4 June 2025}}
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," published in the same year that homosexuality between consenting adults was legalized in the United Kingdom.{{cite web\|url=http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/legResults.aspx?LegType=All+Legislation&searchEnacted=0&extentMatchOnly=0&confersPower=0&blanketAmendment=0&sortAlpha=0&PageNumber=0&NavFrom=0&activeTextDocId=1186262\|title=Sexual Offences Act 1967\|year=1967\|publisher=Office of Public Sector Information\|access-date=June 19, 2014}}
Michael McDowell	{{ubl\|The Amulet (1979)\|Cold Moon Over Babylon (1980)\|Gilded Needles (1980)\|The Elementals (1981)\|Katie (1982)\|Blood Rubies (1982) as Axel Young\|Wicked Stepmother (1983) as Axel Young\|Toplin (1985)}}	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."{{cite book\| last = Winter\| first = Douglas\| author-link = Douglas Winter\| title = Faces of Fear\| publisher = Berkley Books\| year = 1985\| location = New York\| page = 177\| isbn = 0-425-07670-9}}
Michael Talbot	The Delicate Dependency (1982)	A celebrated vampire novel.

References

External links

{{Official website|http://www.valancourtbooks.com}}

Category:Book publishing companies of the United States

Category:LGBTQ book publishing companies

Category:Publishing companies established in 2005

Category:Small press publishing companies