Jingle-Jangle Song

Mariana Villa-Gilbert was born on 21 February 1937 inCroydon, South London. Despite studying art and sculpture, Villa-Gilbert wantedto be a writer. Her first novel Mrs Galbraith’s Air was published byChatto and Windus in 1963. She published five other novels with the publisherover the next decade, My Love All Dressed in White (1964), and MrsCantello (1966), A Jingle-Jangle Song (1968), The Others(1970) and Manuela: A Modern Myth (1973). A short storycollection, The Sun in Hours – the final published work in herlifetime – came in 1986. In the 1990s Villa-Gilbert moved to Cornwall andretreated from public view. She continued to write, however, and her literarypapers – recently acquired by Special Collections at the University of Exeter –contain many unpublished manuscripts. Villa-Gilbert died in 2023. Lurid’s newedition of A Jingle-Jangle Song is the first republication of aVilla-Gilbert novel since the 1970s.

“A Jingle-Jangle Song brings into the lightneglected modes of daily, queer, racialised experience, and commits to beingwholly new and strange. It's a triumph and I'm so glad Lurid Editions has putit in our hands again”—Noreen Masud, author of A Flat Place“To read A Jingle-Jangle Song is todiscover a missing link in the tradition of the 20th centurylesbian novel. It speaks back to The Well of Loneliness andto The Price of Salt, it speaks forward to the JeanetteWinterson of Written on the Body. At the same time, the world itcreates in its spare, compressed way is uncannily contemporary — encompassingcelebrity culture, gender fluidity, the politics of body hair”—Leigh Wilson,Publisher, Spiracle Audiobooks"The heartrending is audible . . . this novella is atonce urbane, tender and brutal. Queer desire painted in vivid strokes andfurtive dashes through protests and parties of 1960s London. To be devouredwhole in one sitting"—Helen Palmer, author of Pleasure Beach“A lesbian love story set against the rapacity of the musicbusiness”—Jane Cholmeley, author of A Bookshop of One's Own