Grove Press Victorian Library
The Grove Press Victorian Library
After the demise of the Venus Library, but before the sale of Grove Press, Rossett published a series of paperbacks with the series title of the Victorian Library. The idea of the imprint was a follow on from a series of Grove Press hardback issues under the general imprint of The Victorian Imagination. The main problem was that Grove Press had already published most of the available Victorian and Edwardian pornography, not only in the above series but also under the Black Cat imprint and the Venus Library. The classics such as A Man with a Maid, My Secret Life, The Modern Eveline, The Pearl and Romance of Lust were already in the backlist. So, while the new series was supposed to comprise reprints of Victorian erotica, most of it was not, and a good deal was expressly commissioned for the series. Richard Manton’s contribution is detailed on this site under Richard Manton and Grove Press.
His site lists all the other titles in the series, alphabetically by title, showing the original book number. The books were issued under the logo GPVL (Grove Press Victorian Library) with specially photographed covers, mainly with the title in an ornate cartouche. All titles stated the author as Anonymous. Many of the titles were later reprinted by Blue Moon and its successors, often under different titles and pseudonyms. The book numbers are part of the Black Cat series, so the GPVL titles are not consecutively numbered.
While erotic flagellation is common in these books, especially in the Richard Manton titles, the content is highly variable.