I don't how many of you are aware of Valancourt Books. They are an American publisher who specialise in reprinting rare classics in cheap, scholarly editions. Some of the novels they have brought back into paperback include works by Arthur Conan Doyle, J.S. Le Fanu and Frances Trollope. Their full list of authors covered can be found here.
Anyway, to the point. I suggested that they may want to look at Edmund Yates (the subject of my thesis, as regular visitors to this blog will know) and, miraculously, they asked me if I'd be interested in editing the novel I suggested (Black Sheep) and providing the introduction etc. Of course, I said yes. I'm not an idiot.
So it's going to be a fair bit of work but I'm looking forward to seeing a paperback copy of Black Sheep on my shelf somewhere in the future. The fact that it will have my name attached is a glorious side-effect. Yates doesn't deserve to be quite as forgotten as he has been and I think I'm right in saying that Black Sheep is his best novel. A mixture of murder, manipulation and love - a pure sensation novel and all the better for it.
You can take a look at their forthcoming titles page and I'm there!
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