Minerva Press

Minerva Press
StatusDefunct
FounderWilliam Lane
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Headquarters locationLondon, England
DistributionUnited Kingdom
Publication typesBooks
Reading The Monk
This 1802 caricature of a couple reading Matthew Lewis's The Monk in the W.C. satirizes readers of "horrid" (i.e. Gothic) novels. (Rijksmuseum)

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. It was established by William Lane (c. 1745–1814) at No 33 Leadenhall Street, London, when he moved his circulating library there in about 1790.[1]

  1. ^ Blakey, Dorothy (1935). The Minerva Press, 1790-1820. Bibliographical Society at the University Press, Oxford. p. 40.