They at Paperback Library were particularly fond of conflating the original sort of Gothic fiction with post-Dark Shadows "supermarket gothics"...
Recycled for one of DC's short-lived gothic comics...
But PL wasn't alone...the first Award edition explicitly labeled this as a gothic...cover by Jeff Jones.
And if gothic readers were disappointed, as they were, by a fairly standard suspense novel...
...imagine what the innocent gothic fan made of "Carmilla"...
A Weird Tales serial, in boards from Arkham House, that *might* just fit if you squint at it the right way...
As Kelly Robinson mentions in comments below, Dell Books decided to package this Newbery Award-winning YA historical novel as a gothic without tagging it in any way as a gothic (or a YA) for at least one edition that saw multiple printings as a "Fic" title (on the spine) and with gothics advertised on the back pages...the back cover headline is "Prisoner in a House of Strangers"...Dell also had a Yearling edition (digest-sized YA line) in print simultaneously. Pretty outrageous, but as Ed Gorman has mentioned to me in email, paperback publishers could routinely look forward to over 100,000-copy sales for any gothic by the early 1970s.
For some good reading on the subject, including the repackaging of other sorts of suspense and horror books to sell them to the Phyllis Whitney-style gothic audience, please see this excerpt from Joanna Russ's essay "Somebody's Trying to Kill Me and I Think It's My Husband: The Modern Gothic" as collected in Russ's To Write Like a Woman.
The Vault of Evil post that inspired this one...
Late additions: Bantam 1972 paperback reprint:
Paperback Library again...1967 reprint:
I always wanted to write a gothic because I read so many of them as a reviewer for a local newspaper. I didn't want to spoof them exactly but at least play around with the major tropes and characters. Why did I review so many gothics? Because if I didn't review one or two in my weekly column I heard from all these crazed gothic fans. Your cover montage here demonstrates how gothic-hungry publishers were. I'm surprised they didn't repackage Zane Grey as a gothic writer. Riders Of Midnight Castle. Still don't know how you know all this stuff when you're noted enough to buy beer. :) Great stuff,Todd. As usual.
ReplyDeleteAs Northanger Abbey is a parody of Gothic novels the cover is more appropriate than the publisher may have known.
ReplyDeleteEd--did you ever read Joanna Russ's essay on the 1960s/70s gothics? I think you would enjoy it if you haven't already: "Somebody's. Trying. to. Kill. Me. and. I. Think. It's. My. Husband: The. Modern. Gothic" (I'll put the link to the incomplete Googlre Books post of the essay in the body of the post here...it is included in Russ's collection YO WRITE LIKE A WOMAN).
ReplyDeletePurple and Grey were certainly the right colors for both the cover art and the prose of a lot of the more pedestrian gothics!
Do you remember any surprisingly good work that you came across? I've found some solid writing among some of the Romantic Suspense fiction that is much of the heir to the modern gothic of the Phyllis Whitney sort, along with the paranormal romances.
And I certainly did more drinking when I was 15 than I do nowb at 51, with no bloom of youth too much in evidence...this touches on a lot of my early reading, in the early '70s particularly, though after my first supermarket gothic, I didn't ganble that way again until I saw a familiar author name from my horror and suspense reading..and folks at the Vault of Evil website pointed all of us toward the Russell Kirk repackaging above (and a few others) some years back. But, thanks, Ed.
Anon, I've noted as much on the blog before...that the Austen is essentially from the era of the original Gothic fiction, Austen as OG, and her parodic impulse was shared by Paperback Library, who presumably felt that selling a public domain novel to those looking for Vera Caspary-style kicks was a win-win for everyone...profit for the publisher and elevation of literary taste, perhaps, for the reader. They definitely knew whay they were doing.
Well, even more Victoria Holt than Vera Caspary...
ReplyDeleteI never saw a paperback cover of a man in pajamas running in fear from a darkened castle, estate, manor house, cottage, lighthouse, or what have you with a light burning in only one window. Wonder why? It might work on a reprinting of Thorne Smith's TOPPER (for example) and start a new trend. Or not.
ReplyDeleteI've always liked those Paperback Library gothic covers. I still have my copy of Carmilla and the Haunted Baronet. Another gem is The Lady of Glenwith Grange, a collection of short stories by Wilkie Collins. They also issued a second Collins collection, The Yellow Mask, along the same lines. Here's a link to a review of Glenwith Grange with several images of the cover.https://hauntedhearts.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/the-lady-of-glenwith-grange/
ReplyDeleteSomehow, Jerry, I'm reminded of the MARATHON MAN promo imagery...but if more men were suddenly willing to toy with the notion, even fictionally, that their wives were alien creatures who might well want to do them in...hmm.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jim! Yeah, Vault of Evil's contributors were doing their best to collate all the Paperback Library titles...I imagine PAPERBACK PARADE has had a more systematic survey at some point, but I hadn't considered the range of things they were offering as supermarket gothics before looking at the Vault coverage (and added my old favorites and added a few more). The Wilkie Collins and the Russell Kirk weren't the only collections (indeed, even if we rule out the Le Fanu 2-novella book). ("Wait...the husband isn't a threat in this one...some lesbian vampire is! What IS this?")
As a young girl, I read The Witch of Blackbird Pond because it was published with a Gothic cover that made it look like a "grown-up" book. I was hoping for something illicit, but I got a Newbery-winning historical about a plucky colonial girl. Sometimes it's hard to find good sleaze, especially when you're 12.
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, I just found that edition of the book the other day at what will probably be my (busted hand) physical therapist's office...I certainly read either the Dell Yearling or the available library edition at the time.
ReplyDeleteYou know, the world seemed pretty full of attractive sexually-charged stuff even when I was twelve...for the Bicentennial!...much less the plethora now. Any attempts to keep me away from such were pretty ineffectual. But, retroactive sympathies!
Oh I'm so familiar with this sort of erroneous packaging, Todd. :) Once upon a time I read tons of gothics and boy did I resent it when the cover misled me. Though truth to tell, I wasn't that easy to fool.
ReplyDeleteBut on my Gothic Imagination Pinterest board, I do include Dracula and Susan Hill and Sheridan LeFanu covers simply because they look good and gothic-y. Nobody said I had to be authentic.
As you say, Todd: It's a Gothic if we say it's a Gothic. Ha!
Paperback Library and to lesser extent Ace Books and Award Books agree! I tried to dig out your Pinterest board...boy, Pinterest sure is intrusive.
ReplyDeleteWonderful covers Todd - the absurdity of it is entrancing - and you know what? I'm not really a fan of the genre, but I would probably try a couple of these on the strength of the covers (assuming I didn;t already know what a great read CONJURE WIFE was - REBECCA I have never got along with).
ReplyDeleteYou know, despite liking a lot of Du Maurier's shorter fiction--"The Birds" the novella is beak and crop ahead of the film, for example--I'v yet to read any of her novels...and if there's a novel that actually did help establish the '60s/'70s gothic template among these here, it's apparently REBECCA...though ROSEMARY'S BABY also was clearly a huge spur, as well as the likes of Whitney and Holt...
ReplyDeleteEleanor Arnason's second novel, TO THE TOMBAUGH STATION, originally was supposed to have a cover parodying the traditional gothic covers -- the heroine (in a space babe outfit?), is running away at night from a spaceship, sitting on its fins, with one light burning in a high window. The publisher refused to accept it, making Eleanor one of the few authors (I suspect) to have a novel accepted but its cover rejected.
ReplyDeleteThat Gothic pb package of Stoker's LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM, incidentally, is one of the few (and until it went up online the only affordable one) that uses the full text instead of the more common abridged text. (But it's a silly and pretty bad novel in either version.)
And Todd asked: "Do you remember any surprisingly good work that you came across?"
ReplyDeleteI recommend Florence Stevenson, especially THE CURSE OF THE CONCULLENS and OPHELIA (the latter is a cat-transmorgrified-into-woman plot, though, and not packaged as a gothic). But CURSE, set in Ireland, has among other good things a patriotic IRA vampire inserted into the usual brooding stanger and (no-nonsense) governess mix.
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?4579
And that "Anonymous" pushing Stevenson was also me; don't know why my name didn't take that time. / Denny Lien
ReplyDeleteO.K., either it's later than I thought or I've had more wine than I thought. I just realized I gave Eleanor Arnason a title belonging to Wilson Tucker. Eleanor's book was TO THE RESURRECTION STATION.
ReplyDeleteLast post for the night, I hope.
You did have me wondering, Denny...thanks for the tips!
ReplyDelete