1946. This is the excellent and heavily lauded Harper prize novel
of that year. Told on the psychiatrist's couch, it concerns the
failure of Jewish Jake Braunowitz to live up to his manhood ...
which forces this job onto the shoulders of his sister Debbie, a
lesbian. The psychiatrist discovers that he ran from his
responsibilities in the first place due to feeling weaker than the
masterful intelligent Debbie; then, after forcing her to take a
man's role in the family, he turns around and feels guilt and
shame at her adjustment to the situation. Excellently done.
SPEERS, MARY. _We Are Fires Unquenchable._ Murray and Gee,
Hollywood 1946. fco. A badly written, almost illiterate novel, the
first few scenes of which are laid in a girl's college swarming
with luridly treated lesbians and in an assortment of Bohemian
settings.
+ SMITH, ARTEMIS. _Odd Girl._ Beacon pbo, 1959. The blurb reads
"Life and love among warped women", but don't let it scare you.
This is one of the better and more serious approaches to the
writing of a serious novel of lesbians through the stereotyped
pattern of the paperback novel. The basic plot concerns Anne, and
her experiences in trying to find out for herself, the hard way,
whether she is a lesbian or whether she can successfully adjust to
life as a normal woman. The story ends with the surprising, but
growingly popular affirmation that "adjustment" is not always to
be desired at all costs. The cover also calls this a story of
"society's greatest curse", meaning homosexuality; but for once it
isn't treated that way.
_The Third Sex._ pbo, Beacon, 1959. Most of the remarks made above
also apply to this one, though the heroine is Joan, a college girl
who fears that she is becoming a lesbian, and fights it by
redoubling her affairs with men. Slightly more sensational than
"Odd Girl", but well written, well thought out and generally
excellent.
SMITH, DOROTHY EVELYN. _The Lovely Day._ N. Y., Dutton, 1957.
Interesting novel of an English village on a choir outing,
contains a minor but funny account of an unconscious lesbian's
decisions.
SMITH, SHELLEY. (pseud. of Nancy Bodington.) _The Lord Have
Mercy_, Harper 1956, pbr tct _The Shrew is Dead_, Dell 1959.
English mystery story; a major subplot involves a pair of
lesbians.
SNEDEKER, CAROLINE DALE. _The Perilous Seat._ Doubleday, Doran
1929, marginal (m) in a juvenile of ancient Greece; the hero,
being sold into slavery, attempts to disfigure himself to escape
"the fate of handsome boys among the Persians."
STAFFORD, JEAN. _Boston Adventure._ Harcourt, 1944.
STEIN, GERTRUDE. _Things as They Are._ Banyan Press, Pawlet,
Vermont. (Very rare; $25 and up second hand.) A novel by the
well-known surrealist poet ... possibly her only coherent work ...
dealing with lesbianism.
STONE, SCOTT. _The Divorcees._ Beacon pbo 1955, released 1959
Evening waster about a racketeer who specializes in quick
divorces, and his girl-friend who flirts with all the women as he
disengages them from their husbands.
_Margo._ Beacon pbo 1955, released 1959. scv.
_Blaze._ Berkley pbo or pbr, n. d. no data except "trash".
SOUBIRAN, ANDRÉ. _Bedlam._ Putnam 1957, pbr Pyramid 1959, (m)
minor.
STONEBRAKER, FLORENCE. _Sinful Desires._ pbr Bedside Books, 1959.
(previous paperback, publisher unknown, ca. 1951). Silly novel
about a married woman briefly captivated by a stereotyped lesbian.
+ STURGEON, THEODORE. (pseud. of Edward Hamilton Waldo). "Affair
with a Green Monkey". Venture Science Fiction May 1957; also in _A
Touch of Strange_, Doubleday 1959.
"The Sex Opposite". in _E. Pluribus Unicorn_, Abelard 1952,
Ballantine pbr 1953.
"The World Well Lost" in _E Pluribus Unicorn._ Many of Sturgeon's
other short stories and novelettes touch on extremely strange,
offbeat relationships.
+ SWADOS, FELICE. _House of Fury._ Doubleday 1941, pbr Lion 1955,
Berkley 1959. One of the better paperbacks, dealing with racial
tensions and muted lesbian attachments in a girl's reformatory.
SWINBURNE, ALGERNON. _Lesbia Brandon._ Falcon Press 1952, edited
and annotated by Randolph Hughes. A famous incomplete novel by the
well-known poet, for students rather than readers. Really only a
handful of scattered chapters, too scrappy to judge; see also
poetry supplement.
SYDNEY, GALE. _Strange Circle._ Beacon Books pbo 1959, 1960. Grace
Garney, feeling unwanted, gets a job with Mrs. Flocke, a repulsive
lesbian, and repels a pass; this, however, revives childhood
memories, and during a rift in her affairs with a man, she has a
brief affair with Inez, a friend with an unsatisfactory husband.
Evening waster.
SYKES, GERALD. _The Center of the Stage._ N. Y., Farrar 1952, pbr
Signet 1954. Witty novel of the theatre, with a minor lesbian
character.
TAYLOR, DYSON. _Bitter Love._ orig. copyright 1952, Pyramid 1958,
(m). Worldly woman marries a homosexual who wants her for a
"front".
TAYLOR, JOHN. _Shadows of Shame._ Pyramid 1956, 1959, (m).
TAYLOR, VALERIE. _Whisper Their Love._ Crest pbo 1957.
Unsympathetic college novel of a girl suffering through a lesbian
affair while all around her the other girls suffer through rape,
incest and abortion. Over-written.
_Girls in 3-B._ Crest pbo 1959. One of three young girls who come
to the city to find jobs or careers, Barby drifts into a lesbian
relationship, mostly out of revulsion against two unfortunate
experiences with men. Excellent, sympathetic.
+ _Stranger on Lesbos._ Crest pbo 1959. A married woman with a
grown son and indifferent husband, returning to college for work
on a college degree, is ripe for an affair with "Bake", a
confirmed lesbian. The affair is told with sufficient skill and
restraint to make it believable; even Frankie's eventual return to
her old life is not a cliche "happy ending" but well prepared and
well characterized. Remarkably good; the degree of progress from
the first to the third of these novels makes your editors anxious
to see where Miss Taylor goes from here.
TELLIER, ANDRÉ. _Twilight Men._ Greenberg 1931, pbr Lion 1950, 52,
56, Pyramid 1959, (m). Well known.
+ TEY, JOSEPHINE. (pseud. of Elizabeth MacKintosh.) _Miss Pym
Disposes._ Macmillan 1948; also in _Three by Tey_, Macmillan 1954.
Slowly built-up, excellently constructed mystery of a girl's
school, where a close attachment between two seniors provides
solution and motivation for a murder. The level of mystification
is so high that even on the last page the reader is gasping with
the final, shocking surprise.
_To Love and be Wise._ Macmillan 1951. Another well done mystery,
with a variant attachment also providing motive and solution and a
high level of suspense and surprise.
TESCH, GERALD. _Never The Same Again._ G P Putnam's Sons 1956, pbr
Pyramid 1958, (m). Not for the squeamish, but a well-done novel of
an affair between a teen age boy and an older man.
+ TIMPERLEY, ROSEMARY. _Child in the Dark._ Crowell 1956. Two of
the three stories in this book involve intense attachments,
variant but not explicitly lesbian, between an English
schoolmistress and a young girl.
THAYER, TIFFANY. _Thirteen Women._ Claude Kendall, 1932. Mildly
nasty shock-story of a murder, involving thirteen women, one mixed
up with a lesbian; she eventually commits suicide.
_Thirteen Men._ Claude Kendall 1930, (m). Much the same stuff as
above only masculine in emphasis. Thayer is a good writer, but not
everyone's choice.
THOMPSON, JOHN B. _Girls of the French Quarter._ Beacon pbo 1954.
_Frenzy of Desire._ Encore Press 1957. Evening wasters.
THOMPSON, MORTON. _Not as a Stranger._ Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1954
pbr Pocket Books 1955. fco, very minor episodes.
+ THORNE, ANTHONY. _Delay in the Sun._ Literary Guild, 1934. A
"heartening idyll" of two friends who, during a long stopover in
Spain, resolve their relationship.
+ TORRES, TERESKA. _Woman's Barracks._ Gold Medal pbo 1950, 51,
52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59 and probably every year from now
on, for a while anyhow. Gold Medal's most popular title so far is
the story of a group of women with the Free French women's army,
at loose ends and disassociated from family, friends and personal
attachments. Among the many threads of the plot is the story of
naive young Ursula, who, through her relationship with warm,
tough, friendly Claude is helped to maturity and eventually to
readjustment to normal life.
_Dangerous Games._ Dial 1957, pbr Crest 1958. A married woman,
discovering her husband is having an affair with her closest
friend, briefly becomes infatuated with her too.
_Not Yet._ Crown 1957, pbr Crest 1958. The story of four young
girls in a French school; not children but "not yet" women, and
their adjustment to life and love. The narrator, the least mature,
is as yet infatuated only with Mother Nathalie, her teacher; no
overt behavior is implied except kisses, but the nun's reaction
when the heroine begins to be interested in boys brings this under
the scope of the study.
_The Golden Cage._ Dial 1959. (trans. from French by Meyer Levin).
A group of refugees in wartime, waiting for visas in Portugal,
undergo various transient attachments. Among the group are several
lesbians, treated with sympathy and sensitivity.
TRAVIS, BEN. _The Strange Ones._ Beacon pbo 1959, (m). Evening
waster about a young no-good who earns his living as a paid
escort/gigolo and relaxes with boy friends but still loudly
insists he is normal. Your editor enjoyed this out of sheer
perversity; usually novels treating of male homosexuality engage
the subject with deadly seriousness, while the paperback originals
reek with drooling voyeuristic strip-teases about lesbians, for
the sake of men who like to enjoy pipe-dreams about lesbians
making love, and about some Big Handsome Hero who eventually
converts the girls to "normality" with some secret formula of
caresses. So it is a nice change to see the gay BOYS getting the
in-and-out-of-the-sheets treatment for once.
TRYON, MARK. _The Fire that Burns._ Berkley pbo 1959 scv.
_Take it Off._ Vixen Press 1953, Modern Press 1956, scv.
UNTERMEYER, LOUIS. (Editor). _The Treasury of Ribaldry._ Doubleday
1956, pbr Popular Library 1959 (v. 1). This contains Lucian's
"Dialogues of Courtesans", entitled in this translation "The
Lesbian" and "A Curious Deception". The hardcover edition also
contains some of the Songs of Bilitis.
VAIL, AMANDA (pseud. of Warren Miller). _The Bright Young Things._
Little, Brown, 1958. pbr Crest 1960.
In a story of two worldly young college girls experimenting with
life and love, a subplot involves two of their friends, lesbians.
Minor but fun.
VANEER, WILLIAM. _Love Starved Wife._ Bedside Books Inc, 1959.
scv.
VAN HELLER, MARCUS. _The House of Borgia_, Paris, Olympia Press,
1957. Volume #16 in The Traveler's Companion, straight scv.
VAN ROYEN, ASTRID. _Awake, Monique._ Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1957,
pbr Crest 1958. Astrid, an orphaned child in some unnamed European
country (Holland, Belgium, Sweden?) is sent to live with her uncle
Rainier; she lives upstairs with Rainier (eventually with a
Lolita-like intimacy) while Rainier's wife lives downstairs with a
lesbian friend, Dini. Despite a "broadminded" plea for
understanding, Rainier strictly forbids Astrid to have anything to
do with the girls. The book is well-written, tasteful, and
certainly candid.
VAUGHAN, HILDA. _The Curtain Rises._ N. Y., Chas Scribner 1935. A
young girl, Nest, in London, falls in with a fiftyish spinster
with a reputation for aiding young and pretty girls who also have
talent. Miss Fremlyn invites Nest to live with her as her
companion, showering her with education, attention and
restrictions; Nest is naive, Miss Fremlyn unaware, at least
consciously, of her own emotions. They travel and live together
for some time, but the affair breaks up when Nest, who has always
kept in touch with her boy friend, is discovered with him and Miss
Fremlyn, considering this a betrayal, dismisses her. Explicit,
well done.
VERNE, CHARLES. _The Wheel of Passion._ N. Y., Key 1957. scv.
VIDAL, GORE. _The City and the Pillar._ E P Dutton 1948, pbr
Signet ca. 1950, (m).
_The Season of Comfort._ E P Dutton 1949, (m).
WAHL, LOREN. _The Invisible Glass._ Greenberg, 1950, pbr tct _If
This be Sin_, Avon 1952, pbr tct _Take Me as I Am_, Berkley 1959,
(m).
WALFORD, FRANK. _Twisted Clay._ Claude Kendall, 1934. fco. A young
girl, a psychotic sadist ... is bisexual and has one big affair
with an older woman. It must be marked for people with very
complete collections only; it is depressing, inaccurate, etc. "The
writing, etc, are excellent, but oh my, what a plot!"
+ WARD, ERIC. _Uncharted Seas._ Paris, Obelisk Press 1937. (Fairly
easy to obtain second hand, and not at all like most of the sexy
trash tagged Paris elsewhere in this list.) An excellent,
perceptive and controlled story of Diana Bellew, a young married
woman with children, a childish husband and too much money and
time on her hands, and her successive affairs with three women.
The writing is unusually good for male authorship.
WEBB, JON EDGAR. _Four Steps to the Wall._ Dial 1948, pbr Bantam
1953, (m). Prison novel.
+ WEIRAUGH, ANNA ELISABET. _The Scorpion._ Greenberg 1932, Willey
Book co, 1948, pbr Avon Books 1957, complete; pbr tct _Of Love
Forbidden_, greatly abridged, 1958. Well-known novel of well-bred
German girl, Metta (in some translations, Myra) who, in her late
teens, falls in love with a worldly lesbian, Olga, who does much
to free her from her stuffy background, but repudiates her
painfully in a family crisis. After Olga's suicide Metta seeks for
her real self and real destiny, first in the Bohemian
drink-drugs-sex merrygoround of Berlin between the wars, then
hides from life in a stuffy middle-class setting; when even here
she finds herself pursued by a lesbian tease, Gwen, who flirts
with Metta to inveigle her into a sordid party _a trois_, Metta
resolves to go away and come to terms with her own soul.
_The Outcast._ Greenberg 1933, Willey Book Co 1948. The sequel to
the above, this finds the heroine of _The Scorpion_ living quietly
in the country. She undergoes a painful and unsatisfactory affair
with Fiametta, a dancer, but when this proves unsatisfactory
settles down sadly but peacefully with a couple of sexless men
friends.
WEISS, JOE, and Ralph Dean. _Anything Goes._ Bedside Books pbo,
1959. Fast-moving evening waster with a minor lesbian angle.
WELCH, DENTON. _Maiden Voyage._ L. B. Fischer 1945, (m) minor.
_In Youth is Pleasure._ L. B. Fischer 1946, (m) minor.
+ WELLS, CATHERINE. "The Beautiful House" Harpers, March 1912. An
idyll of two women ends tragically with the marriage of the
younger.
WELLS, KERMIT. _Reformatory Women._ Bedside Books pbo 1959.
Surprisingly good for this publisher of rubbish. After escaping
from a sadistic lesbian matron in the reformatory, Noreen works as
a fake butch in a Greenwich Village Gay bar and tourist trap;
later goes to work for gangsters in a roadhouse, falls for a nice
boy and goes back to serve her reformatory sentence and marry him
when she gets out. Pleasant evening waster.
WETHERELL, ELIZABETH (pseud of Susan Warner). _The Wide Wide
World._ Many editions, very easily obtained, a well-known girls
story of the 1880s or thereabout, dealing with Ellen, an orphan of
twelve. Much of the first half of the novel is devoted to a very
innocent, but exceptionally intense, close relationship between
Ellen and her beloved "Miss Alice", daughter of the local
minister. Good of kind, and distinctly relevant on an adolescent
level.
WHEELER, HUGH. _The Crippled Muse._ Rinehart, 1952. A "sparkling
comedy" of Capri contains the story of two women who have lived
together for ten years; the younger girl is tired of the
arrangement, and the older uses her feelings of guilt and shame to
hold her captive. In the course of the novel she manages to free
herself.
WHITE, PATRICK. _The Aunt's Story._ Viking Press 1948. fco.
WIMBERLEY, GWYNNE. _One Touch of Ecstasy._ Frederick Fell, 1959. A
lesbian affair gives "one touch of ecstasy" to a woman's
inhibited, unhappy life, allowing her to return to her husband
with wakened perceptions.
WILDER, ROBERT. _Wait for Tomorrow._ Putnam 1950, Bantam 1953. A
girl's unwilling entanglement with a predatory lesbian, in a
romance of an imaginary Balkan country, leads to all sorts of
violence and cloak-and-dagger stuff. Good.
+ WILHELM, GALE. _Torchlight to Valhalla._ Random, 1938, pbr tct
_The Strange Path_, Lion 1953, Berkley 1958, 1959. Morgen,
rootless and drifting after the death of her artist father, to
whom she had been childishly close, is loved by two fine young
men, but finds her happiness with a strange young girl, Toni.
Major, well known.
_We Too Are Drifting._ Triangle Books 1938-39; Modern Library
1935. pbr Lion Books 1951, Berkley 1957, 58, 59, 60. Probably the
major novel of the thirties to deal with lesbians; perhaps the
best of all time. In substance it deals with the boyish, but
feminine Jan Morale; her struggle to escape a slightly sordid
affair with Madelaine, a married woman, and to find happiness,
despite family complications, with a young girl, Victoria. Told
with fairness, restraint, and skill--not to mention that this is
one of the dozen or so books on this entire list to display not
only _some_, but _exceptional_ literary merit.
WILLIAMS, TENNESSEE. "Something Unspoken" in _27 Wagons Full of
Cotton._ New Directions, 1953. Also in Best Short Plays of
1955-56, Dodd, Mead, 1956. A play; I marked this for fco, received
a protest: "Everybody will enjoy this." Compromise; everybody will
enjoy this who likes Tennessee Williams.
WILLIAMS, WILLIAM CARLOS. _The Knife of the Times._ Dragon Press,
1932, hcr tct _Make Light of It_, Random House 1950, (m). The title
story is in DWCory, _21 Variations_.
WILLIAMS, ISABEL. _Hellcat._ Greenberg 1934, pbr Dell 1952.
Unpleasant girl who uses everyone for her own purposes includes a
lesbian among her victims.
WILLINGHAM, CALDER. (pseud). _End as a Man._ Vanguard 1947, pbr
Signet co. 1957, (m).
WILLIS, GEORGE. _Little Boy Blues._ Dutton, 1947. Concerns the
machinations of a lesbian to achieve marriage and motherhood as a
"front".
WILSON, ETHEL D. _Hetty Dorval._ Macmillan 1948, fco.
WINDHAM, DONALD. _The Hitchhiker._ Florence, Italy, priv. print.
(m).
_Servants with Torches._ N. Y. 1955 priv. print. (m).
_Dog Star._ Doubleday, 1950, (m).
WINSLOE, CHRISTA. _The Child Manuela._ (Trans. Agnes Scott Farrar,
1933.) Motherless Manuela, sent to a strict boarding-school
because of supposed misconduct with a boy (actually she was only
fascinated with his mother) falls in love with Elizabeth von
Bernberg, one of the teachers. The woman's behavior is strictly
correct, but her warmth of personality attracts all the
love-starved, inhibited children; Manuela, exhilarated and
slightly drunk at a school party, babbles of her love for the
Fraulein, and is punished so severely that she throws herself from
a top-floor window.
_Girl Alone._ (Trans. Agnes Scott). Farrar 1936. A girl in
difficulties finds temporary refuge with a lesbian friend.
WINSTON, DAOMA. _The Golden Tramp._ pbo Beacon Books 1959. Evening
waster about a woman writer trying it both ways.
WOLLER, OLGA. _Strange Conflict._ Pageant, 1955. Purple-passaged
and would-be-horrifying story about a Eurasian
hermaphrodite--supposedly as she is because of her mother's
intercourse with demons before her birth--who inspires love and
brings death to everyone she knows, male or female.
WOODFORD, JACK. _Male and Female._ Woodford Press, 1935.
_Unmoral._ Woodford Press, 1938. Both of these are evening
wasters--racy stuff, not bad at all when compared with the current
crop of trashy paperbacks. The "lesbian" content, of course, is
strictly for fun.
WOOD, CLEMENT. _Strange Fires._ Woodford Press, 1951. "Shipwreck
on Lesbos" in his _Desire_, Berkeley n. d. 1958 (copyright 1950,
perhaps Woodford Press?) Clement Wood is either a pen name for, or
a successor to, Jack Woodford, a popular writer of racy, risque,
sexy books of little literary merit but relatively innocuous even
for teen-agers ... the trash of the thirties and forties was a
very different thing from the scv of the fifties.
WOOD, CLEMENT, and Gloria Goddard. _Fair Game._ Woodford Press,
1949, pbr Beacon 1958. Evening waster about girls coming to the
wicked big city, and we all know what happens to such girls in
this kind of book. One of them falls in with the dangerous women
instead of the dangerous men.
+ WOOLF, VIRGINIA. _Orlando._ _To The Lighthouse._
_Mrs. Dalloway._ All of these are classics easily available in
small, medium and large libraries, college bookstores, and the
like. The lesbian content is vague and subtle, but good; one of
the best woman writers.
WOUK, HERMAN. _Marjorie Morningstar._ Doubleday 1955, pbr 1956.
The variant element in this is minor and problematical. In
conversation, it occurred to a group of reviewers that the
developing relationship between Marjorie and Marsha "resembled a
love affair", that Marsha's attack of hysterics at her wedding,
and her outcry that all she had ever wanted was a friend, and now
she'd always be alone, was of distinct significance. BAYOR.
WYLIE, PHILIP. _The Disappearance._ Rinehart 1951, pbr Pocket
Books 1958. Science fiction; for men, all women vanish; for women,
all men vanish. The problem of lesbianism arises in the women's
world; Wylie, though technically and superficially approving of
homosexuality, has his heroine reject it for herself, saying "I'm
not a child."
_Opus 21._ Rinehart 1949, pbr Signet 1952, 1960. The hero,
rewriting a book in a hotel during a weekend of crisis, runs
across many unusual characters; among them a woman, shaken because
her husband is having a homosexual affair, is shamed into
tolerance by dallying with a lesbian prostitute. Wylie, again
superficially approving, has his hero act in a skirt-withdrawing
way, refusing such things for himself at the last minute in every
book.
WYNDHAM, JOHN. "Consider her Ways" in _Sometime, Never_,
Ballantine 1956-57. Science Fiction; a woman experimenting with
strange drugs goes into the future, where all men have perished
and society resembles that of the ant. Good.
_The Midwich Cuckoos._ Ballantine, 1957. Science Fiction. Alien
visitation from outer space leaves every nubile female in
Midwich--married or single, young or old--pregnant. Hilariously
funny situations arise; one of the funniest involves a pair of
lesbians. Wonderful fun.
YAFFE, JAMES. _Nothing But the Night._ Little, Brown & Co, 1957,
pbr Bantam 1959, (m). More fake Leopold-Loeb. Good.
YOURCENAR, MARGUERITE. _Hadrian's Memoirs._ Farrar, 1954, qpb
Anchor 1954, (m).
ZOLA, ÉMILE. _Nana._ Literally dozens of hardcover and paperback
editions of a shocker about a street girl who, in addition to all
her affairs with men, also has an affair with Satin, a
streetwalker.
_A Lesson in Love._ Abridged edition of Pot Bouille. Pyramid,
1959.
ZUGSMITH, ALBERT. _The Beat Generation._ Bantam pbo based on
screenplay by Richard Mathesen, (m) minor.
_The Poetry of Lesbiana_
An index of Poems and Poets of interest to Collectors of Lesbiana
_Compiled by Gene Damon_
Briefly, this includes variant as well as overtly lesbian
poetry, written in English or available in English
translation. The arrangement is chronological, rather than
alphabetical. All of these are easily available in public
libraries, unless otherwise indicated.
THE ANCIENT WORLD:
_Erinna_--only one fragment left. Available in the Greek Anthology
and other miscellaneous collections of that type.
_Nossis_--Various variant poems and fragments. Greek Anthology,
Putnam, 1915-26 (5 vol.). Also in similar collections.
_Sappho_--The classic poet of lesbianism. Over 50 editions available
in hard covers. New translation by Mary Barnard, University of
California Press, 1958, qpb $1.25. An attractive edition is also
published for $2.50 by the Pater Pauper Press, on display in most
bookstores.
_Juvenal_--Satires. Many editions in hardcover and qpb. (Rolfe
Humphries trans. and ed. the Indiana University Press, 1958, $1.50;
also number 997 in Everyman's Library, $1.85.) The Sixth Satire.