Minerva Press was a publishing house, notable for creating a lucrative market in sentimental and Gothic fiction, active in the late 18th and early 19th centuries (1790-1820[1]).
[2] The Minerva Press was hugely successful in its heyday, though it had a reputation for sensationalism among readers and critics, and for sharp business practices among some of its competitors.
"[5] Many of Lane's regular writers were women, including Regina Maria Roche (The Maid of Hamlet, 1793; Clermont, 1798); Eliza Parsons (The Castle of Wolfenbach, 1793; The Mysterious Warning, 1796); E. M. Foster; and Eleanor Sleath (The Orphan of the Rhine, 1798) whose Gothic fiction is included in the list of seven "horrid novels" recommended by the character Isabella Thorpe in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.
Valancourt Books began reprinting Minerva Press titles in 2005, beginning with the anonymously published The Animated Skeleton (1798).
)[10]A close friend and fellow UCL student of Chris Martin, Tim Crompton looked at a copy of Philip Horky's book,[11] Child's Reflections, Cold Play,[12] published by a Minerva Press Ltd.,[13] a London, UK vanity publisher, with offices in India (Minerva Press India Pvt.