The Publisher That Went Bump in the Night

It’s October (also known as Pumpkin Spice Month 😛) and we are fast approaching Halloween and the spooky season, when people seem to enjoy a good scare. But as we’ve discussed before, liking a good scare isn’t solely a modern phenomenon: the nineteenth century equivalent of the slasher film was the Gothic novel. We’ve had some discussion of Gothic literature here on NineteenTeen in past years, but did you know that there was a whole publishing company devoted to publishing books that go bump in the night?

It was a dark and stormy night, and in an eldritch, dimly-lit chamber of cyclopean architecture whose angles were all wrong  (oops, sorry—I started parodying the wrong author) a certain London building at Cree Church-Lane, a handsome, flashing-eyed man brooded over his desk...

William Lane, born some time around 1745, began his career as a printer in London then opened a circulating library in 1774, becoming sufficiently successful to commence publishing books in the 1780s. He obviously kept a weather eye on what was selling well, and in the 1780s, what was selling well were books like The Castle of Otranto and The Old English Baron—works that allowed readers to be surprised, spooked, and titillated without ever leaving their comfortable chairs by the fireside.

So William began to include similar titles in his publishing list, which he now named the Minerva Press, moving his operations and circulating library around the corner to Leadenhall Street...and business took off. Calling his imprint the Minerva Press was a stroke of marketing genius: the name Minerva (the Roman goddess of wisdom) lent a certain respectability and a highbrow, classical veneer to the endeavor, though his books were firmly in the popular literature camp. And while his list included non-Gothic romance, earlier 18^th century fiction, and even some non-fiction, the Gothic novel is what Lane’s Minerva is remembered for.

Of course, he had his detractors. The quality of his books was derided; evidently, production values were not high...but that enabled him to sell his books much more cheaply (and in larger quantities.) And also of note was the fact that many of his most popular authors were women—Regina Maria Roche, Eleanor Sleath (whose books were among those recommended by Isabella Thorpe to Catherine Moreland in Northanger Abbey)*, and Eliza Parsons were among his top names. Though they did not make much money from selling books to Minerva Press because the profit margin was a slim one, multiple women authors got their toes in the publishing door through Minerva.

Business boomed through the 1790s, enough that the aging Lane took on partners to share the workload: John Darling and Anthony King Newman joined him in 1799 preparatory to his retirement in 1804, whereupon Newman took over Minerva Press. Newman continued to publish, though after Lane's death in 1814 and by 1820 the “Minerva Press” name had been retired in favor of “A.K. Newman & Co.”

So...are you wondering just how spooky some Minerva Press’s novels were? You need wonder no longer: Valancourt Press has reprinted dozens of Lane’s titles as well as a good helping of other Gothic fiction. You too can settle in a comfortable chair by a good fire, and be terrified most deliciously.

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*Amusingly, it was thought that Jane Austen had made up many of the titles of Gothic novels mentioned in Northanger Abbey, until some scholarly detective work in the 1920s revealed that they had all, indeed, been realio, trulio published works.