Greetings!

Greetings, all, and a belated welcome to our new website! We hope you like it.

Well, as you can see, after a long hiatus spent jousting at windmills (or practicing law; I forget), we're back from the dead and extremely busy.

The past month has seen four new titles. First, an annotated edition of Bram Stoker's The Lady of the Shroud (1909), a book surprisingly hard to find in its original unabridged form, edited with a new introduction by Prof. Sarah E. Maier, and featuring a stunning original cover by award-winning fantasy artist Jef Murray, who had previously illustrated our gorgeous deluxe edition of The Magic Ring. Also new is Charlotte Smith's The Story of Henrietta (1800), a book-length Gothic-style tale set amidst turbulent conditions in colonial Jamaica, originally published as the second volume in her five volume set of Letters of a Solitary Wanderer. Previously available only in one of those $800 Pickering & Chatto sets (yes, $800!), Henrietta is now available in our affordable scholarly edition, featuring a new introduction and notes by Janina Nordius. Finally, for all the Gothic lovers out there, we've just released newly typeset paperback copies of Henry Summersett's Mad Man of the Mountain (1799) and Grenville Fletcher's Rosalviva, or, The Demon Dwarf! (1824).

Also, we've been busily making our books available as e-books for download from Amazon.com. We now have 82 of our 120 titles available for the Kindle and iPad, with almost all titles priced at $2.99 to $6.99. Although we'll always prefer the printed books, we had gotten a lot of requests for Kindle editions, and we recognized that the Kindle books fill an important niche for those who want the book instantly, don't have room in their collection for more printed books, or want a less-expensive alternative to the cost of some of the more pricey hardcover volumes. Each of the Kindle editions is checked by us for its compatibility with Kindle and iPad before being published, but if you find any weird glitches as you're reading, please let us know. We're still pretty new to the Kindle thing and while we're doing our best, it is possible that readers may have suggestions for improvement.

What we're working on now: First, we are trying to clear the backlog of manuscripts here that have been waiting in some cases quite a long time for publication. So by the end of the year expect to see our Victorian Werewolf Anthology, Barbara Tilley's edition of Emma Frances Brooke's A Superfluous Woman, Wolfram Setz's edition of Sins of the Cities of the Plain, and Caspar Wintermans' volume on French writer Baron Fersen. We also hope finally to see the long-awaited and long-delayed The Burnaby Experiments (1952) by Stephen Gilbert and Prof. Devoney Looser's edition of Jane West's A Gossip's Story (1796), thought to be an influence on Jane Austen.

Speaking of gossip, here's some of what's in the pipeline for down the road. Way back in 2005, we advertised Carl Grosse's Horrid Mysteries (1796) as forthcoming. Well, now it is! Ryan has nearly finished typing the four volume text, and Prof. Allen Grove, who did such an excellent job with our editions of The Witch of Ravensworth, The Italian, and The Cavern of Death, will be contributing an introduction. Horrid Mysteries will appear as the sixth volume in our collection of the Northanger 'horrid novels.' Maria Purves is at work on an edition of the very scarce Minerva Press Gothic The Monk of the Grotto (1800), set to be out next year. Jacqui Howard has contacted us about preparing editions of two other rare Minerva titles by the same anonymous author, Lusignan, or, The Abbaye of La Trappe (1801) and The Orphans of Llangloed (1802). Dr. Howard previously edited Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho for Penguin and has published an article in which she argues that Lusignan and The Orphans of Llangloed bear striking similarities to the writing of Ann Radcliffe, who mysteriously dropped out of sight and apparently stopped publishing after The Italian (1797).... or did she? Our old friend Francis Lathom makes another reappearance, with The One-Pound Note and Other Tales (1820), which will feature an introduction by Max Fincher, who previously introduced our edition of The Fatal Vow (1807). The title novella, “The One-Pound Note,” is an extremely curious text with fairly explicit gay subtexts involving the relationship between two young men, both pathetically ineffective in their relationships with women but both apparently quite happy in each other's company while holed up in a hotel room together for a couple weeks.

In the non-Gothic realm, Minna Vuohelainen, who has done excellent editions of Richard Marsh's The Beetle and The Goddess for Valancourt Books, is preparing editions of Marsh's Judith Lee and Sam Briggs stories, which should be appearing soon. We've had a ton of inquiries about Judith Lee in particular, so these should be excellent and popular volumes. Michael Matthew Kaylor, who has prepared several really wonderful scholarly editions for Valancourt Books, is working on an edition of The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus (1911) by John Stuart Hay, which those who enjoyed Prof. Kaylor's previous editions will surely welcome. Gerald Monsman, who has prepared editions by Bertram Mitford, Walter Pater, H. Rider Haggard, and John Trevena for Valancourt Books, has prepared an edition of Trevena's Sleeping Waters (1914).

More exciting updates in the next blog post. In the meantime, keep up to date with the latest Valancourt releases and news by liking us on Facebook and following us on Twitter!