To celebrate LGBTQIA+ history month, we have something incredibly special for you. Publisher D-M Withers will be talking to us about an important, and until now largely unknown queer novelist, Mariana Villa-Gilbert (1937-2023), and her finest novel, A Jingle Jangle Song.
Fabulous indie publisher Lurid Editions are bringing out a new edition of A Jingle Jangle Song in 2026 and are very excited to re-introduce readers today to this lost lesbian novel of the late 1960s – quirky, sweet, eccentric and filled with the sounds and energies of the era’s counterculture, from a forgotten queer author who deserves to be remembered.
DM Withers will be in conversation with local author and creative writing lecturer Clare Fisher to discuss Villa-Gilbert’s life and work, queer book and publishing history; they will reflect on why access to the literary past is vital for queer readers, alongside the wider recovery work of Lurid Editions, publish rediscovered LGBTQIA+ books from the twentieth century archive
About A Jingle Jangle Song
“You get fed up singing jingle jangle songs and doing gigs around the country. There’s no time to wonder, no time to lie in the grass and dream. One loses so much: one just isn’t a real person any more.”
Late 60s London, folk singer Sarah Kumar arrives to give a concert. She is hot stuff and a hot mess – androgynous, awkward and alluring.
Kumar attends hip parties, sings to her fans and passes out wasted. She is a picture of consummate coolness, hid nervously behind huge sunglasses – a subversive imagining of a strong queer female lead amid the commercial folk boom.
Inside the countercultural throng, Kumar’s life is soon derailed by an encounter with an older woman, the intoxicating Mrs. Stankovich.
Buried in the archives for far too long, A Jingle-Jangle Song is the lost queer novel of the late 1960s. Eccentric and atmospheric, sweet and satirical, the novel celebrates how queer desire erupts in unexpected – and unignorable – ways.
Publisher, D-M Withers said: “When I first read A Jingle Jangle Song, I was thrilled by the prose, intoxicated by the story and captivated by the protagonist Sarah Kumar's Main Character Energy. I then felt sad, and furious, that a book this good was not more widely available, and that such an interesting queer author, published by a stellar literary publisher in the 1960s, has more or less totally disappeared from the literary map. Bringing out a new edition of Villa-Gilbert's most groovy novel is a restorative act that will enable her work to be read again in a historical moment that will understand and - I hope - embrace her.”
Villa-Gilbert’s literary executor, Christopher Adams said: “I am thrilled that Lurid Editions will be publishing Mariana Villa-Gilbert's queer classic A Jingle Jangle Song. Not only will the publication bring this seductive tale to a new generation of readers, it will solidify the novel's place within the canon of mid-century queer writing.”
“A Jingle-Jangle Song brings into the light neglected modes of daily, queer, racialised experience, and commits to being wholly new and strange. It's a triumph and I'm so glad Lurid Editions has put it in our hands again”—Noreen Masud, author of A Flat Place
About the author:
Mariana Villa-Gilbert was born on 21 February 1937 in Croydon, South London. Despite studying art and sculpture, Villa-Gilbert wanted to be a writer. Her first novel Mrs Galbraith’s Air was published by Chatto and Windus in 1963. She published five other novels with the publisher over the next decade, My Love All Dressed in White (1964), and Mrs Cantello (1966), A Jingle-Jangle Song (1968), The Others (1970) and Manuela: A Modern Myth (1973). A short story collection, The Sun in Hours – the final published work in her lifetime – came in 1986. In the 1990s Villa-Gilbert moved to Cornwall and retreated from public view. She continued to write, however, and her literary papers – recently acquired by Special Collections at the University of Exeter – contain many unpublished manuscripts. Villa-Gilbert died in 2023. Lurid’s new edition of A Jingle-Jangle Song is the first republication of a Villa-Gilbert novel since the 1970s.
About Lurid Editions:
Lurid Editions is a publishing project committed to intentional and conscientious acts of archival repair of the queer literary past. Run by a team who grew up before LGBTQIA+ books became widely and uncompromisingly published and access to queer narratives and stories was limited, they were attentive to how marginalised histories are forgotten and remembered, and are hungry to rediscover the queer literary past for queer readers, for whom these books fill as much a need for connection with the past as they do an urge to read for pleasure. Lurid Editions patches the gaps and listens to silences, enabling circulation to occur.
About the speakers
D-M Withers is Lecturer in Publishing at the University of Exeter and Director of Lurid Editions. They have a particular interest in the publishing cultures and activist businesses that emerged from or alongside the feminist social movements of the 1970s and 1980s, and have published research on Virago Press and Honno, the Welsh Women's Press. Their short book Virago Reprints and Modern Classics: The Timely Business of Feminist Publishing was published in 2021 (Cambridge University Press).
Clare Fisher is a fiction writer and creative writing lecturer. Their debut novel, All the Good Things (Viking, Penguin, 2017) won a Betty Trask award and was described by the Guardian as ‘a sparky and unsettling debut.’ Their short story collection, How the Light Gets In (Influx Press, 2018) was longlisted for the Edgehill Short Story prize and the International Dylan Thomas prize. Their most recent short story collection, The Moon is Trending has just been published by Salt.
Juno Books is teeny so events can be cosy, but we will try and meet any access needs you have. Full access info is available here: https://www.junobooks.co.uk/accessibility-and-faqs but please email us at hello@junobooks.co.uk with any specific requests.