What exactly defines a cult book? Its qualities are subjective, often intangible and niche, though we all know one when we see it. Think Mervyn Peake’s quirkily gothic Gormenghast novels or The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter’s seminal reworked fairy tales. Think Doris Lessing’s radical showstopper, The Golden Notebook, or The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart, a countercultural yarn still spoken of in rapt tones by its acolytes.

This article was originally published in September 2019.

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What’s certain is that the cult classic inspires passionate devotion among its fans, who frequently weave their own myths around the texts. But another, underexamined, feature of the cult book is this: in contrast to the examples above, it can sometimes age really badly. Every bit as badly as giant shoulder pads, velour tracksuits and platform hiking boots.

We’ve taken a blushing look back at some of the formerly hip tomes now shelved in that spectral section of the bookshop reserved for the irredeemably dated, the hopelessly irrelevant, the plain offensive. Their fate tells us a little something not only about why cult novels fade but also about how they’re made in the first place.