A Jingle Jangle Song: In Conversation with D-M Withers

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.

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.”

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however, and her literary papers – recently acquired by Special Collections at the University of Exeter – contain many unpublished manuscripts.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.

Kit Heyam (they/he) is a writer, historian, heritage practitioner and educator based in Leeds. They are the author of Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender (Basic Books UK/Seal Press, 2022), a global history of gender nonconformity which was nominated for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction  and a History Today book of the year. They work with museums and in the media to change the way we tell stories of the queer and trans past. They also sing in three choirs, play the tenor horn, co-organise Leeds Queer Film Festival, and attempt to meet their toddler’s insatiable demands for apples and poetry.

D-M Withers is Director of Lurid Editions and Lecturer in Publishing at the University of Exeter.