Jacqueline Susann

“Valley of the Dolls is a grim fable. It’s Thomas Hardy dark. It’s Dostoyevsky greige. Nothing ends well. Success corrupts. Fame destroys. It is, in other words, the perfect mirror for today’s culture.”— Simon Doonan 

“The kind of book most of its readers could not put down. I, for one, could not … For me reading Valley of the Dolls was like reading a very very long, absolutely delicious gossip column … Magnetic.”—Nora Ephron

“I couldn’t believe these weren’t real girls because I know them. Maddeningly sexy. I wish I had written it.”—Helen Gurley Brown

It’s hard to believe, but Jacqueline Susann’s groundbreaking first novel Valley of the Dolls  (Grove Press/July 2016), is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. When it was published in 1966, the book became a cultural phenomenon with its pioneering look into drug addiction, feminism, and women’s and gay rights. An overnight success and #1 bestseller, it electrified readers around the world. A department store in Chicago sold the book under the counter, literally. TIME magazine branded it “the dirty book of the month.”

Considered not just risqué, but outré, it transformed fashion by introducing readers to the stylish and charming author who was known for her Pucci dresses, big sunglasses, beaming smile, and movie-star charm. Hollywood buzzed with theories of who was who. One of the world’s most popular novels in the late ‘60s, the all-time pop-culture classic has sold over 31 million copies (putting it in the bestselling ranks of To Kill A Mockingbird and Gone With The Wind), and has been printed in 30 foreign editions. It is as timely and relevant as it was 50 years ago.

The story of Anne, Neely and Jennifer—three ambitious young women in New York City, best friends hungry for love and celebrity—is just as gloriously, scandalously fun, as ever. Long before “Sex and the City” and “Girls,” Susann brought us their dreams, sexual appetites, success, and the deadly seduction of power, money, and prescription pills. She coined the word “dolls” for barbiturates to be washed down with vodka or swallowed straight, which became a dark and dangerous escape.

For the 50th Anniversary of the innovative and trend-setting novel, Grove Press will publish a limited hardcover and a new and revised paperback edition of Valley of the Dolls, with a foreword by Simon Doonan and a new preface by Susann’s estate. The new editions will have a beautiful new cover design and reveal some of Susann’s substantial archive for the first time, including personal photos and an article she wrote in 1966 entitled, “My Book is Not Dirty.”