FOWLER, ELLEN T.The Farringdons.N. Y., Appleton, 1900. Three intense variant attachments by a motherless girl under twenty, which subside when she falls in love with a man.
FRANKEN, ROSE.Intimate Story. Doubleday, 1955. A novel by the author of the popular Claudia series.
+ FREDERICS, DIANA. (pseud);Diana, a Strange Autobiography. Dial 1939, pbr Berkley Books 1955, 1957, 1958. Well known story of a young musician/teacher’s discovery and slow acceptance and adjustment to her lesbian personality.
FRANK, WALDO.The Dark Mother.N. Y., Boni & Liveright, 1920, (m). A too-possessive mother ruins her son’s life.
FRIEDMAN, STUART.Nikki.Monarch Books, 1960, scv.
The Revolt of Jill Braddock.Monarch Books 1960. scv. Male and female homosexuality in a ballet company, with Jill in the middle. “Not as bad asNikki, but still a pretty raw evening waster.”
GARLAND, RODNEY.The Heart in Exile.Coward McCann 1954, pbr Lion 1956, (m). Because of courageous approach to the basic problem of relations between the homosexual and his family, this story of a young homosexual in an unconventional household deserves shelfspace everywhere.
GARNETT, DAVID.A Shot in the Dark.Little, Brown 1959, pbr tctThe Ways of Desire. Popular Library 1960. Complex, fast-moving adventure story, involving a great number of lesbians.
GARRETT, ZENA.The House in the Mulberry Tree.Random House, 1959 Sensitive story of a girl of eleven, fascinated by an innocently appealing neighbor, a married woman. The mother, observing, innocent caresses between the two, separates them.
+ GARRIGUE, JEAN. “The Other One” ss inCross Section, ed. by E. Seaver, Simon & Schuster, 1947.
GAUTIER, THEOPHILE.Mademoiselle de Maupin.Many editions, including Modern Library, n. d. also pbr Pyramid Books 1956, 1957, 1958. Classic novel of lesbianism.
GENET, JEAN.The Maids.Grove Press qpb 1954. Offbeat existentialist drama; involuted love among women.
GEORGIE, LEYLA.The Establishment of Madame Antonia.Liveright, 1932. Light entertainment about inhabitants of a high-class European bordello, including a young recruit protected by an older woman.
GIDE, ANDRE.The School for Wives.N. Y., Knopf, 1950
The Immoralist.Knopf 1930, hcr 1948, (m).
The Counterfeiters.Knopf 1927, (m).
GILBERT, EDWIN.The Hot and the Cool.Doubleday 1953, pbr tct
See How They Burn, Popular Library, 1959, (m). Minor and subtle homosexual overtones in a novel of jazz musicians.
GODDEN, RUMER.The Greengage Summer.Viking 1957, fco.
A Candle for St. Jude, Viking 1948, fco.
GOLDMAN, WILLIAM.The Temple of Gold.Knopf 1957, pbr Bantam 1958, (m) minor fco.
GOLDSTON, ROBERT.The Catafalque.Rinehart 1957, 1958. High-quality thriller about ill-fated archaeological expedition to Spain; crisis precipitated when a sinister Countess takes young Stephanie, the expedition leader’s daughter, to a grotto where a pagan goddess has been worshipped with lesbian rites and attempts to seduce her there.
GREENE, GRAHAM.The Orient Express.Doubleday 1933, pbr Bantam 1955. Trainful of mixed adventurers includes a lesbian between girl-friends but still trying.
GUDMUNDSSON, KRISTMANN.Winged Citadel.Holt, 1940, (m). Brief but very explicit homosexual interlude in a fine historical novel of Crete and the Bull-dancers.
GUNTER, ARCHIBALD.A Florida Enchantment.Home Pubs 1892. No data available, BAYOR.
HACKETT, PAUL.Children of the Stone Lions.G. P. Putnam 1955. An important lesbian character in a novel which has had good reviews.
+ HAGGARD, SIR HENRY RIDER.Allan’s Wife.First published, 1889; now in print in Five Novels of H. Rider Haggard, Dover Press, 1951. A strange story, and this year’s special “find”. Allan, hero of the famous adventure-novelist’s KING SOLOMON’S MINES, is here shown as a young man, in love with Stella Carson—an English girl reared in the unspoilt beauty of a lost valley in Darkest Africa. The romance is complicated by the passionate jealousy of Hendrika—stolen in infancy by gorillas, reared as a female Tarzan, and rescued to be Stella’s companion, foster-sister and adorer. Hendrika first attempts to murder Allan; the scene in which she rages insanely at Allan for stealing Stella’s love, and Allan’s quiet acceptance of the “curious” fact that the strongest loves are not always between those of different sexes, places this book almost alone in forthright English treatment of variance for its date. From this high level of psychological realism, the story reverts to Haggard-type melodrama; Stella is kidnapped by Hendrika’s gorilla friends; dramatically rescued in a thrilling jungle battle; her death from exposure and Hendrika’s remorseful suicide complete the story. Strange, romantic, and quite in a class by itself.
HALES, CAROL.Wind Woman.Woodford Press 1953, pbr tctSuch is My Beloved, Berkley 1958. Sad, sad, sad story of the psychoanalysis of a young lesbian such as was never seen on sea or land. Harmless and nitwitted ... read it and weep, or giggle.
see also LORA SELA.
+ HALL, RADCLYFFE.The Well of Loneliness.Many editions, some cheap hcr (Sun Dial ed, still in print, n. d.) also Permabooks pbr n. d. The classic first novel of a lesbian, written soon after WWI. Stephen Gordon, male in physique, temperament and character, seeks for lasting love and some measure of acceptance from a rejecting world.
The Unlit Lamp.N. Y., Jonathan Cape 1924; the endless sacrifice of a daughter into a sterile, wasted life because her mother cannot accept her right to live her own life.
Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself.Harcourt, Brace 1934. A lesbian finds her true destiny after a lifetime of serving her country. Overtones of science fiction.
A Saturday Life.London, Falcon Press, 1952 (orig. pub 1925). An attempt at farce, not overt anywhere.
HALL, OAKLEY M.Corpus of Joe Bailey.Viking 1953, Permabooks 1955, (m). Also contains a pathetic pair of lesbians, one camouflaging her true leanings by pretending to be the campus whore.
HARDY, THOMAS.Desperate Remedies.Harper 1896; still in print, London, the Macmillan Co, 1951 ($3.00). Brief but relevant episode in a novel by a classic English novelist.
+ HARRIS, SARA.The Wayward Ones.Crown 1952, pbr Signet 1956,57 One of the few really good treatments of lesbian attachments in a girl’s reform school. Bessie, a wayward girl, is sent to a “good” reform school; at this stage she is naive, fairly innocent and presumably redeemable. The loneliness, the sadistic persecution by the corrupt or hardened matrons, and the “racket”—the enforced division of the school into “moms” and “pops”, by hardened young girl hooligans who like the power it gives them, and permitted by the matrons under the self-deception that these attachments are normal, schoolgirlish crushes—finally complete the girl’s corruption until it is certain that she will come out of school a confirmed young criminal, Sara Harris is herself a social worker; this painfully accurate picture of what our juvenile authorities contend with may, at least, give some insight into why the police and social agencies tend to be so violently anti-lesbian, It is hard to forget the picture painted in this book of the frightened Bessie insisting “I don’t never do no lovin’ with girls.’”—and the threats made to her. An absolute MUST book—on the other side.
HARRIS, WILLIAM HOWARD.The Golden Jungle.Doubleday 1957, pbr Berkley 1958. Brittle novel about a wall street banker; his beautiful wife is a lesbian, but he naively believes her faithful because she prefers the company of women.
+ HASTINGS, MARCH.Demands of the Flesh.Newsstand Library pbo, 1959. Ellen, a young widow suffering from physical frustration, goes through a period of promiscuity involving several men and a brief affair with a lesbian, Nita. Oddly enough for this sort of borderline-risque stuff, the lesbian character is well and realistically drawn; realizing that Ellen is basically normal, she helps keep her on an even keel until she remarries. Good of kind.
Three Women.pbo Beacon Books 1958. Good and sympathetic story of a young girl involved with a basically decent older woman, a lesbian, Byrne. Unfortunately Byrne is deeply involved with, and obligated to, her Insane cousin Greta, and the affair ends in tragedy, leaving young Paula to marry her faithful boy friend. The lesbian interlude, however, is treated not as a “twisted love in the shadows” or any such cliche matter, but simply as a human relationship, in its' total effect on Paula’s personality; and she always remembers Byrne with affectionate regret. Excellent of kind.
The Obsessed.Newstand Library Magenta Books, 1959. The psychoanalysis of a nymphomaniac, including an affair with her boy-friend’s lesbian sister. Not nearly as good as March Hastings’other books, and much more dedicated to sexy scenes at the expense of character and situation. Evening waster—almost scv. (It should be noted that some paperback publishers insist on a specified number of sex scenes, and in such a book as this one can almost hear the weary sigh with which the author abandons his story, which is going well, and stops everything for another measured dose of sexy writing for the nitwit audience.)
HECHT, BEN.The Sensualists.Messner, 1959, pbr Dell 1959. A great deal of advance publicity built this up to a best-seller. Highly sensational shock-stuff; a supposedly happily-married woman discovers her husband is having an affair with a singer, Liza. When she comes in contact with Liza, however, she realizes that Liza is a lesbian, having affairs with men for camouflage purposes, and is soon herself captivated by Liza. From here events build up to highly shocking climaxes, including a ghastly murder. Not to be read after dark.
HEMINGWAY, ERNEST. “The Sea Change” ss inThe Fifth Column and the First 49 Stories, P. F. Collier & Son, 1938. This volume also contains two stories dealing with male homosexuality; “A Simple Inquiry” and “Mother of a Queen.”
HELLMAN, LILLIAN.The Children’s Hour.Knopf, 1934. Also Random House 1942; also in Burns-Mantle, Best Plays of 1934-35. A rumor of lesbianism (unfounded) wrecks a school, and the lives of the women who own and manage it.
HENRY, JOAN.Women in Prison.Doubleday 1952, pbr Permabooks 1953. This is nonfiction, autobiographical account of a woman’s experience in two English prisons. Very good.
HEPPENSTALL, RAYNER.The Blaze Of Noon.Alliance 1940, pbr Berkley 1956, (m). Minor, fco and BAYOR.
HESSE, HERMAN.Steppenwolf.Henry Holt 1929. qpb Frederick Ungar, 1960. Symbolic (and classic) novel of man’s disintegration, caused by society’s ignorance. Contains highly sympathetic homosexual characters (male and female).
HIGHSMITH, PATRICIA.The Talented Mr. Ripley.Coward, 1955, pbr Dell 1959. (m, minor)
Strangers on a Train.Harper & Bros. 1950. (m, minor)
see also CLAIRE MORGAN
HILL, PATI.The Nine Mile Circle.Houghton, Mifflin 1957 fco. Dreamy story of two teenage girls and an idyllic summer during which they constantly pretend to be man and wife, on a girlish, unerotic level. Very nice.
HIMMEL, RICHARD.Soul of Passion.Star Pub, Co 1950. pbr tct.
Strange Desires, Croydon Pub. 1952, pbr Avon, tct.
The Shame, 1959, (m). No masterpiece but an interesting story about a man spending a week with his dead Army friend’s wife and recalling his long relationship with the dead man; over the week he slowly comes to acknowledge, and come to terms with the fact that their relationship had had overtones of homosexuality.
HITT, ORRIE.Girl’s Dormitory.Beacon pbo 1958 scv.
Trapped.Beacon pbo 1954. scv.
Wayward Girl.Beacon pbo 1960 scv.
HOLK, AGNETE.The Straggler.(Trans, from the Danish by Anthony Hinton). London, Arco Pub. 1954, pbr tct.
Strange Friends, Pyramid Books 1955, very slightly abridged. Boyish Scandinavian Vita adopts a “little sister” but is quite unaware of the nature of her attraction to Hilda. In her late teens Hilda, stirred but unsatisfied by this attachment, makes an unwise marriage, and Vita undergoes a period of rootless drifting, a brief affair ending in separation, and finally makes a permanent arrangement with Hilda, whose unsuccessful marriage ended in divorce. Valuable for a portrait of European gay life, very unlike the American.
HOLLIDAY, DON.The Wild Night.Nightstand Books 1960 (no publisher’s address listed). Composite novel of six lives which converge on New Year’s Eve in a cheap Greenwich Village strip joint. “One of those unexpectedly good stories one finds among the floods of paperback trash.” One of the six characters is a lesbian.
HOLMES, (JOHN) CLELLON.Go.Scribner 1952, pbr Ace Books 1958, (m).
The Horn.Random House 1953, Crest pbr 1958, (m).
HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL.Elsie Venner.Burt, 1859; many editions, a classic novel of a very strange girl, psychologically akin to poisonous snakes. In the course of this novel a curious and intense relationship develops between Elsie and a young schoolmistress named Helen; a compulsive domination, attraction and revulsion. One might suspect Dr. Holmes, whose medical writings and observations place him far ahead of his era psychologically, of gentelly camouflaging a portrait of variance, 100 years ago, by making the girl a creature of macabre fantasy.
+ HORNBLOW, LEONORA.The Love Seekers.Random 1957, pbr Signet 1958. The heroine’s hesitation between marriage with a steady and reliable man, and insecure excitement with a hoodlum, is resolved when her affairs are interrupted by concern for the daughter of a friend; the young lesbian, Mab, whose life has become entangled with some very shady characters.
+ HULL HELEN R. “The Fire” ss in Century Magazine, Nov 1917; Excellent story of a small-town girl’s love for a middle-*aged spinster who awakens her to a world beyond her small one.
“With One Coin for Fee”, novelette inExperiment, Coward-McCann 1938, 1939, 1940. An introspective spinster and a lifelong friend, trapped in a New England house during the 1939 hurricane; subtle but good.
The Quest.Macmillan, 1922. An over-emotional girl, seeking escape from home tensions, develops crushes on a classmate and on a teacher. her mother’s over-reaction turns the girl against variant attachments just as her30unhappy home turned her against marriage.
The Labyrinth. Macmillan, 1923. Variant attachments, among others, in a novel of a woman unhappy in domesticity and trying to find creative outlets.
Landfall. N. Y. Coward-McCann 1953. In a brittle and sarcastic novel of a brittle and sarcastic woman, the heroine, a capable businesswoman, alternately repulses and warms toward her adoring secretary—though she secretly scorns the girl’s devotion, she feels it would be a nuisance to break in a new secretary, so wishes to keep her captivated.
HUNEKER, JAMES.Painted Veils. Liveright 1920 (still in print); pbr Avon 1928. Unpleasant novel of the theatrical and literary world of that day; the heroine, Easter, (an opera singer) has a mannish satellite.
HURST, FANNIE.The Lonely Parade. N. Y. Harper 1942. Very minor mention of lesbians in a novel of lonely women at hotels.
+ HUTCHINS, MAUDE PHELPS McVEIGH.A Diary of Love. New Directions, 1950, pbr Pyramid 1952, 1960. Weird stuff, written with a detachment and delicacy reminiscent of the Colette novels. A teen-age girl, Noel, goes through a bizarre series of experiences in a strange household where her grandfather seduces his (male) music pupils and a nymphomanic, neurotic housemaid, Freida, successively seduces everyone from Grandpa down to Noel. Beautifully done.
Georgiana. New Directions, 1948. The second section of a sensitive, well-written novel is laid in a girl’s school; there are three important variant attachments, and as a result one of Georgiana’s classmates is expelled. In later life Georgiana blames her failure to find happiness on a “lesbian complex.”
My Hero. New Directions, 1953, (m).
ILTON, PAUL.The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah. pbo, Signet, 1956, 1957, (m). Historical, Biblical setting.
JACKSON, CHARLES.The Fall of Valor. Rinehart & Co, 1946, pbr Signet, 1950, (m).
The Lost Weekend. Farrar & Rinehart 1944, pbr Berkley 1955 and others.
"Palm Sunday" ss in collectionThe Sunnier Side, pbr Berkley nd and others, also in Cory,21 Variations.
+ JACKSON, SHIRLEY.Hangsaman. Farrar, 1951. Frightening, macabre story of a lonely girl who conjures up a thrilling companion—who looks and acts like a boy but is clearly a girl. They meet secretly and engage in wild conversation and loveplay, and only slowly, with dawning horror, does the reader realize that the child is a split personality and the two girls are one and the same.
The Haunting of Hill House. Viking, 1959. During the investigation of a reputed “haunted house”, two of the investigating party—Theo, an admitted lesbian, and Eleanor, a lonely, inhibited spinster—go through a curious, subtly delineated relationship wavering, with the intensity of the “haunting” of the house, from attraction to intense love to unexplained revulsion. Macabre; good of its kind.
JAMES, HENRY.Turn of the Screw. Macmillan 1898, hcr Modern Library n d, Pocket Books and other editions. Available everywhere. Some authorities consider subtle and understated lesbianism to be the mysterious motivations behind the scenes of this curious psychological ghost story of the struggle of a governess for the souls of two young children.
The Bostonians. Century Magazine 1885, hcr Dial 1945.
JOHNSON, KAY.My Name is Rusty. Castle Books, 1958. Allegedly a novel of a woman’s prison, complete with glossary of “prison slang”—but if the author has ever been inside a woman’s prison, or even done any authentic research, your editors will eat a copy of the book, complete with cover jackets. Brief plot; butchy Rusty makes a pass at prison newcomer Marcia, in order to share her commissary credits. When Rusty gets out of prison she marries and goes straight and Marcia kills herself. Read it and weep.
JONES, JAMES.From Here to Eternity. Scribners 1951, pbr Signet ca. 1952, (m).
KASTLE, HERBERT D.Koptic Court. Simon & Schuster 1958, pbr tctSeven Keys to Koptic Court, Crest 1959, (m).
KEENE, DAY and Leonard Pruyn.World Without Women. pbo Gold Medal, 1960, Science-fictional evening waster; all the women in the world die off, except a few, who must be carefully protected as potential mothers of the human race. One episode involves all the surviving lesbians, who barricade themselves in a prison. Good of type.
KENNEDY, JAY RICHARD.Short Term. World, 1959. This one is just out; reviews indicate some lesbian content, but this could be anything from a paragraph to three chapters. BAYOR.
KENT, JUSTIN.Mavis. Vixen Press 1953, pbr Beacon 1960. scv. “Mavis is married to a lush, so she dallies and so does he, and they are really a pair of dillies dallying....”
+ KENT, NIAL. (pseud of William LeRoy Thomas)The Divided Path. (m). Greenberg 1949, Pyramid pbr 1951, 1952, 1959. For once the plus is used to promote personal prejudice; various authorities call this book overly sentimental. But when this hardened reviewer finds herself in tears, she’s apt to think there must be something to it. Childhood, adolescence and manhood of Michael, a young homosexual, and his long-continued,32scrupulously self-denying relationship with a boyhood friend who does not suspect his friend’s “difference”.
KENYON, THEDA.That Skipper from Stonington.Messner, 1946. A juvenile novel, strangely enough, found in a high school library. The hero runs away to sea as a small boy and is protected by a man who is obviously homosexual, though the boy does not know it; the other men on the ship, suspecting that this relationship is unhealthy (it isn’t) hound the boy’s protector to suicide.
KEOGH, THEODORA.Meg.Creative Age Press 1950, pbr Signet 1952, 1956. Sublimated lesbianism in a very young girl.
The Double Door.Creative Age 1950, pbr Signet 1952, (m).
KESSEL, JOSEPH.The Lion.(trans. from French by Peter Green). N. Y. Knopf 1959. One editor saw subtle variant emotion in the mother’s attachment to a school friend.
KING, DON.The Bitter Love.Newsstand Library Magenta Book, 1959. Rather good evening waster about a supposed double murder, gradually solved by the slow revelation of the affair between Brenda and her 16 year old stepdaughter.
KING, MARY JACKSON.The Vine of Glory.Bobbs-Merrill, 1948. This won a prize as the best novel on race relations by a Southern writer for its year. A repressed, inhibited, small-town girl, Lavinia, at the mercy of elderly tyrannical relatives, forms a close friendship with a Negro man who was her only childhood friend. The friendship between Lavinia and Augustus is purely platonic; she attends a school he has set up for colored girls who wish to improve themselves, and he helps to find her a job; but enraged small-minded bigots bring on a lynching. Early in the book a preparation is laid for Lavinia’s lack of friends of her own sex and status by her unfortunate friendship with Dixie Murdoch, teen-age daughter of a Holy-roller preacher. While spending the night, Dixie attempts to make homosexual advances to the younger girl, and Lavinia becomes hysterical. The episode is brief, condemnatory and very realistic.
KIN, DAVID GEORGE.Women Without Men.Brookwood, 1958. The author calls this “True stories of lesbian life in Greenwich Village”. It represents a roundup of a dozen or so famous literary and artistic figures, presented as case histories. They are presented, picture after sordid picture, without a glimmer of understanding or real insight, though he sometimes shows smug sympathy for a few he claims to have reformed by something he calls “cultural therapy”. He baldly states in the preface; “I take my mental hygiene from Moses, rather than Freud, and have the Mosaic horror of homosexuality”. Despite this vicious slanting, the book is explicit, funny in places, and presumably verifiable—but certainly makes homosexuality look like a Fate Worse Than Death. The writing is straight from the tabloid newspapers.
KINSEY, CHET.Kate.pbo, Beacon 1959. scv.
KOESTLER, ARTHUR.Arrival and Departure.Macmillan 1943. A man makes the most important decision of his life on the rebound of disillusion after discovering that a woman who risked her life to save him is a lesbian.
+ KRAMER, N. MARTIN (pseud. of Beatrice Ann Wright).Hearth and The Strangeness.Macmillan 1956, pbr Pyramid 1957. An excellent novel of the fear of inherited insanity in a family. The youngest child, Aliciane, becomes a lesbian; this is one of the few realistic and unromanticized portraits of the factors in the development of homosexuality from childhood.
Sons of the Fathers.Macmillan 1959, (m).
LACRETELLE, JACQUES DE.Marie Bonifas.(trans. from the French of La Bonifas) London & N. Y., G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1929. Classic novel of feminine variance. Exclusively lesbian characters are rare in French literature (although bisexual women are relatively common), and this was one of the best known; it follows the heroine from childhood to old age.
LACY, ED.Room to Swing.Harper Bros. 1957, pbr Pyramid 1958, A colored detective is retained by a pair of lesbians to solve a murder; is instead accused of committing it. Good.
+ LANDON, MARGARET.Never Dies the Dream.Doubleday, 1949. An unmarried woman missionary in Siam incurs criticism and suspicion when she shows marked favor to an unfortunate American girl at the mercy of the Orient; later, when she risks her own life by isolating herself to nurse Angela through typhoid, she loses her own position. Neither the author nor the heroine of the novel admit the faintest tinge of lesbianism to the relationship, which is full of warmth and selfless sacrifice, and India angrily denies the accusation when it is made; but the high emotional intensity of the whole story bring it well within the boundaries of the field and place it high on the list.
LA FARGE, CHRISTOPHER.The Sudden Guest.Coward-McCann, 1946. The human driftwood blown up by a hurricane includes a pair of lesbians, stirring latent memories in the novel’s heroine—an embittered, abandoned spinster.
+ LAPSLEY, MARY.Parable of the Virgins.R. R. Smith, 1931. High-keyed novel of many emotional fevers, hetero and homosexual, in a woman’s college.
LAWRENCE, D. H. “The Fox”, ss in Dial Magazine 1922, also in hcr but NOT in pbr edition ofThe Captain’s Doll, Thomas Seltzer, 1923.
The Rainbow.Modern Library 1915, 1943, pbr Avon 1959, 1960. In a long, three-generation novel of the Brangwyn family, one variant episode between young Ursula and a teacher.
LAURENT-TAILHADE, MARIE LOUISE.Courtesans, Princesses, Lesbians.(Trans. from French by G. M. C.) Paris, Libraire Astra. Casanova-ish memoir; French pamphleteering of Pre-revolutionary days. Bitter, explicit and mildly disgusting; mentioned mostly to state emphatically that the French Libraire Astra, and the Astra’s Tower Checklist, have NO connection.
LE CLERQ, JACQUES.Show Cases.Macy-Masius, 1928. Offbeat short stories, dealing with male and female homo-*sexuality.
LEAR-HEAP, WINIFRED.The Shady Cloister.Macmillan, 1950. Quiet, understated and sympathetic story of feminine relationships in a school setting—but without the melodramatic atmosphere of tragedy which usually surrounds such stories.
+ LEE, MARJORIE.The Lion House.Rinehart, 1959. Well-written attempt to capture and document the confused and shifting morals of modern suburban living. Brad, husband of Jo, starts the story by flirting with Frannie; this backfires when Frannie and Jo become friends. As the relationship grows more intense, it proves so disturbing that even after Frannie has admitted its nature Jo cannot accept it; Frannie attempts to solve her problems via psychoanalysis, while Jo continues floundering in her unresolved conflicts. This year’s best new novel.
LEE, GYPSY ROSE.Gypsy, a Memoir.Harper Bros. 1959, pbr Dell 1959. In a fascinating, probably largely fictional autobiography, the ex-burlesque queen/novelist shows one thoroughly comical lesbian character. This is really minor, but marvelously funny, and anyone who plows through all the crud we mention will get a real break from this.
LE FANU, SHERIDAN. “Carmilla” inGreen Tea and Other Ghost Stories. Also in Vol III of “The Forgotten Classics of Mystery”, entitledSheridan Le Fanu, the Diabolical Genius. Also inStrange and Fantastic Stories, ed. by Joseph Margolies, McGraw Hill, 1946. Fantastic lesbian vampire.
LEIBER, FRITZ. “The Ship Sails at Midnight”, inThe Outer Reaches, ed. August Derleth, Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisc. 1951. Science-fiction or fantasy of a strange, unusual woman who captivates a whole group of college students; tragedy is touched off by their jealous rage when it is discovered that she has been making love to all of them—not simultaneously of course. Extremely well done, hint of allegory.
LEGRAND, NADIA.The Rainbow Has Seven Colors.N. Y. St Martins, 1958. After the death of The heroine her life is reviewed by seven people who loved her (as withOf Lena Geyer) including a lesbian who loved her and a young girl who wanted to.
+ LEHMANN, ROSAMOND.Dusty Answer.N. Y., Holt, 1927. Still in print. Well-known novel in which the heroine’s whole life is conditioned by her love for a college classmate. Delicate, beautifully written.
LENGEL, FRANCES.Helen and Desire.Olympia Press, Paris, 1954. scv, and you can’t buy it in this country legally. If you locate a copy you’ll know why we say you aren’t missing a thing. Seamy novel of a nymphomanic—- ing her way around the world. (It’s not worth going to Paris to read.)
LESLIE, DAVID STUART.The Man on the Beach.London, Hutchinson 1957, (m).
LEVAILLANT, MAURICE.The Passionate Exiles.(trans. Malcolm Barnes.) Farrar, Straus & Cudahy 1958. Historical “dual biography” of Madame de Stael and Madame Recamier.
+ LEVIN, MEYER.Compulsion.Simon & Schuster 1956. pbr Pocket Books 1958, (m).
LEWIS, SINCLAIR.Ann Vickers.Doubleday, 1933. One important lesbian episode in a novel of woman suffrage, viciously condemnatory.
LEVERIDGE, RALPH.Walk on the Water, Farrar, 1951, pbr tctThe Last Combat, Signet 1952, Pyramid 1959, (m).
LEWIS, WYNDHAM.The Apes of God.N. Y. R. M. McBride & Co, 1932, London, Arthur Press 1950, London, Arco, 1955. Satire, including sharp studies of homosexuality, male and female.
LIN, HAZEL.The Moon Vow. Pageant Press, 1958. A Chinese woman psychiatrist, attempting to solve a patient’s problems, is led into seamy byways of Peking, including a somewhat gruesome lesbian cult.
LINDOPS, AUDREY ERSKINE.The Outer Ring.Appleton 1955, pbr Popular Library tctThe Tormented, (m).
LINGSTROM, FREDA.Axel.Boston, Little, Brown & Co., 1939. Wealthy man adopts two boys and a girl. One boy, Valentine, has homosexual affair with an older boy, Teddy, who later commits suicide; the girl, Auriol, studying music in Germany, lives with 2 older women, one of whom is very innocently but very ardently in love with her. Well-written.
LIPSKY, ELEAZAR.The Scientists.Appleton-Century-Crofts 1959, pbr Pocket Books, 1960. Minor character in a long novel is a vaguely treated, but explicit lesbian.
LIPTON, LAWRENCE.The Holy Barbarians.Messner, 1959. Love among the beat generation, including all kinds of homosexuality.
LITTLE, JAY.Somewhere between the Two. Pageant, 1956, (m).Maybe Tomorrow. Pageant, 1952, (m). Amusing
LIVINGSTON, MARJORIE.Delphic Echo.London, Andrew Dakers, 1948, (m). Minor, in a novel of ancient Greece.
LODGE, LOIS.Love Like a Shadow.Phoenix Press, 1935. Purple-passaged novel of a lesbian seeking true love.
+ LOFTS, NORAH.Jassy. Knopf 1945, pbr Signet 1948, others. Roughly a third of this novel, about a young English girl who, herself innocent, brings tragedy on everyone, is lesbian in emphasis. In a girl’s school she comes between Mrs. Twysdale, a rather slimy, neurotic woman who has adored her boyish cousin, Katherine, for years. Katherine, chafing at this adoration, turns to Jassy for undemanding friendship and Mrs, Twysdale connives to have her expelled—which spurs Katherine to precipitate a long-desired break with her.
The Lute Player. Doubleday, 1951; pbr Bantam 1951, (m). Fine historical of Richard III, based on the thesis that he was homosexual.
+ LONG, MARGARET.Louisville Saturday.Random 1950, pbr Bantam 1951, 53, 56, 57, 59. A study of women in wartime includes a brief study of a woman’s acceptance of a variant friendship (the sections titled GLADYS).
LORD, SHELDON.A Strange Kind of Love.N. Y., Midwood-Tower Pubs pbo 1959. Evening waster about a writer who discovers that two of his (dozens of) girl friends are involved with one another.
69 Barrow Street.Midwood-Tower pbo 1959, scv. Love, if you can call it that, in Greenwich Village.
+ LOUYS, PIERRE.Aphrodite.(Many editions, of which the standard English translation seems to be The Collected Works of Pierre Louys, Liveright, 1926, still in print. Also various Avon paperbacks.) The beautifully written story of an Alexandrian courtesan also includes the story of two young Greek girls, Rhodis and Myrtocleia, no more than children, who wish to marry one another.
The Adventures of King Pausole.As above. Fine, funny, highly risque story of the king of a strange country, who has a thousand wives, like Solomon, and believes in freedom for everybody except his daughter, Aline—who eventually runs away with a “boy” who is really a girl.
The Songs of Bilitis.As above. Prose or poetry, depending on translation, and perhaps the classic story of lesbianism in an ancient setting.
LUCAS, RICK.Dreamboat.pbo, Berkley, 1956, 1957. scv.
LYNDON, BAREE, and Jimmie Sangster.The Man who Could Cheat Death, based on the screenplay, for the recent movie, which in turn was based on a play, The Man in Half Moon Street.37Without the fantastic photography which made the movie superb, this is a remarkably silly pseudo-science thing about a man who finds away to survive indefinitely by glandular transplants. To camouflage his deathlessness he pulls up his roots and moves every ten years and during one such interlude he falls for beautiful Avril Barnes, who turns out to be a lesbian. He converts her, and she becomes such a pest that he murders her. Shocker, silly.
MacCOWN, EUGENE.The Siege of Innocence.Doubleday, 1950, (m). And minor lesbian element.
MacKENZIE, COMPTON.Extraordinary Women.Martin Secker, London; Macy-Masius N. Y. 1928, hcr New Adelphi 1932. The Winston Book Service offered this for sale quite recently. Amusing, satirical and well-known novel of lesbians.
The Vestal Fire.N. Y. Doran, 1927, (m). However, in this novel of Americans living abroad, there are also important lesbian characters.
MacRAE, KEVIN.Nikki.Vantage. 1955. Not to be confused with the rubbishy book by the same title by Stuart Friedman, this is a story of Nikki, who loses her beloved in an air raid in London and nearly cracks up before finding a home in a lesbian “colony” in Southern California; silly, but a lot of fun.
+ MacINNES, COLIN.Absolute Beginners.London, MacGibbon & Rae, 1959. A novel about London teenagers, told in Soho idiom—a sort of bastard hip-talk. The characters in this novel include several male homosexuals, and one lesbian, Big Jill. Enough space is devoted to social problems, by an author who is quite obviously one of the “angry young men”, to give this novel real status.
McMINNIES, MARY.The Visitors.Harcourt, Brace 1958. A diplomat’s wife abroad, fancying herself as Madame Bovary, attempts to use everyone around her for her own purposes. She has an affair with an American correspondent and also captivates Sophie, a countess, and an extremely well-portrayed character. One of the most sympathetic portraits of a lesbian in recent fiction, as well as a ruthless portrayal of women who enjoy flirting in both fields.
+ MAHYERE, EVELINE.I Will not Serve.Dutton 1959, 1960. This book, boycotted by many major reviewers, was written by a young Frenchwoman who committed suicide before its publication. Precocious, nonconformist Sylvie has been expelled from a convent for writing, in a letter, that she loves one of the nuns. The story deals with the unfolding pattern of Sylvie’s meetings with Julienne, an older novice in the convent. The conflict is clear; Sylvie’s creed is “I will not serve”—a statement of her refusal to become a good wife and mother—and she wants nothing of life but Julienne. Julienne, has given herself38to God. Refusing to accept this, Sylvie commits suicide. The book is profound and sincere, and on the basis of this one work the author’s premature death was a loss to the field of literature.
MAINE, CHARLES ERIC.World Without Men.pbo, Ave Books 1958. Science fiction of a world thousands of years in the future, where the men have all died out, reproduction is scientific and the women, having no one else to love, love one another. In defiance of all conceivable theories of heredity and environment, a few women still think this state of affairs is “unnatural” and band together to create a male birth, assuming everyone will turn normal overnight. Silly.
MALLET, FRANCOISE.The Illusionist.(Trans. by Herma Briffault). Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1952 tctThe Loving and the Daring, Popular 1953. (pbr). Now well-known novel, by a young French writer, of a girl captivated by her father’s mistress.
The Red Room.(trans. by Herma Briffault). Farrar, Strauss & Cudahy 1956, pbr Popular 1958. Sequel to the above.
MALLOY, FRED.The End of the Road.Woodford Press 1952, pbr Berkley tctWicked Woman, 1959. Good evening waster about a girl who is picked up by Charlotte, a truck-driver “dike” type; Charlotte gives Alice a home, but eventually Alice runs off with a man who is worse than she is. Surprisingly, for this type of thing, the author implies that thereisa fate worse than lesbianism.
MANNING, BRUCE.Triangle of Sin.Intimate Novel (Universal Pub.) 1952, pbr Beacon Books 1959; same title, but author listed as Manning Stokes. Evening waster.
MANNIX, DANIEL P.The Beast.pbo Ballantine Books 1959, (m).
MARECHAL, LUCIE.The Mesh(trans, by Virgilia Peterson.) Appleton 1949, pbr Bantam, 1951, 1953, 1959. Excellent novel of a Belgian family; the weakling son marries, brings his bride into home dominated by his mother, shadowed by his lonely sister. Eventually sister takes the young woman away from her brother.
MARLOWE, STEPHEN.Homicide is My Game.Gold Medal 1959 pbo. Hardboiled murder mystery involving a teenage sex club—a businessman is involved of running it, but the real culprit is his daughter, Liz. She is also a lesbian. Evening waster.
MARK, EDWINA. (pseud of Edwin Fadiman jr).My Sister, my Beloved.Citadel 1955, pbr Berkley 1956. Two young sisters, daughters of a drunken lush of a mother, fall into a too-close relationship as Eve, the older, protects young Sheila from their mother’s beatings and tantrums.39Sheila plays around and gets pregnant; mother, at the stage where alcohol will kill her, is given a big drink by Eve, who then arranges for Sheila to have an abortion and the two of them to live happily ever after; instead, Sheila marries the boy and Eve is whipped half to death by one of her mother’s gigolos. One ofthosebooks—where anything from abortion to rape is preferable to lesbianism.
+The Odd Ones.Berkley pbo; 1959. Jean, smalltown girl running away, comes to New York and falls in with Sherri, tied to a crazy husband. Rather good and not condemnatory at all; rather restrained for a pbo, although of course it has the obligatory sexy stuff.
MARR, REED.Women without Men.Gold Medal pbo, 1956. Naive, if not too intelligent girl sent to a woman’s reformatory, encounters the usual hardening experiences—corrupt matrons, police-court-type lesbians, trusties and well-meaning officials who have their lives to live and can’t or won’t do anything to better conditions. Good of its kind.
MARSHE, RICHARD.A Woman Called Desire.(Orig. pub. 1950 under title ofWicked Woman) Berkley pbr 1959, scv.
MARSTON, JOHN.Venus With Us; a Tale of the Caesars.N. Y. Sears, 1932. pbr Universal Pub. 1953 tctThe Private Life of Julius Caesar. Fast, funny, risque historical novel—or romance—with approximately six historical errors per chapter, but a lot of fun nevertheless. The scenes laid in the College of Vestals are exclusively lesbian; there are both serious, emotional affairs between women, and funny light-hearted ones in the manner of King Pausole. Good of kind.
+ MARTIN, KENNETH.Aubade.London, Chapman & Hall 1957, (m).
MASEFIELD, JOHN.Multitude and Solitude.Macmillan 1909, 1916.
MASSIE, CHRIS.The Incredible Truth.Random, N. Y. 1958, pbr Berkley 1959. Victorian husband narrates, many years afterward, his wife’s successive attachment to two woman friends.
MAUGHAM, SOMERSET.Theatre.Doubleday 1937, Bantam pbr tctWoman of the World, 1951, pbr Bantam tctTheatre1959. Theatrical novel of a worldly actress, Julia, contains brief mention of a fat, elderly lesbian admirer who finances her works: one amusing scene where Julia’s husband advises her on how to manipulate Dolly’s feelings. Smart, brittle.
MAUPASSANT, GUY DE.Paul’s Mistress.ss in various collections including Cory,21 Variations on a Theme.
MAYHALL, JANE.Cousin to Human.Harcourt, Brace 1960. Valeda, friend of the heroine, has a sad, depressing affair with an adolescent schoolgirl athlete friend, named Mildred.
MEAGHER, MAUDE.The Green Scamander.Houghton Mifflin, 1933. A novel of the Trojan war, largely concerned with the passionate friendship between Penthesilea, co-queen with the Amazon tribe, and her co-ruler Camilla. Beautifully written, available in most medium-sized libraries.
MEEKER, RICHARD.The Better Angel.Greenberg 1933, pbr Universal Pub. tctTormentca. 1952, (m).
+ MEREZOWSKII, DMITRI. (Trans. from Russian by Natalia A. Duddington) London, J. M. Dent & Co, 1925, 1926.Birth of the Gods.A fine novel of Crete and the bull-dancers (and perhaps the first of its kind). Dio, a strangely bisexual young girl, priestess of the Great Mother, though attracted and attractive to men, is vowed to remain a virgin in the service of the Goddess; much of the novel is devoted to her passionate friendship for her young novice, Eoia. One of Dio’s rejected lovers, believing that the “little witch” has cast a spell on Dio to prevent her loving him, plots to have Eoia killed in the ring; instead Eoia’s death nearly destroys Dio as well.
Akhnaton, King of Egypt.(as above) London, Dent, 1927. Continues and concludes the story of Dio.
MERGENDAHL, CHARLES.The Girl Cage.pbo Gold Medal 1953, 1959. Brief, minor lesbian episode in a novel about war widows.
MERRITT, A(braham);The Metal Monster.Copyright Munsey Magazines, (this ran serially in Argosy ca. 1920) Revised version, Frank A. Munsey 1941, pbr Avon, 1946. Offbeat variant episode in an adventure-fantasy; Norhala, pagan slave of the “metal people” steals the explorer’s sister, Ruth, to “play with her”; after her death Ruth weeps, saying “she loved me dearly, dearly,” but significantly can remember nothing of their time together. Wildly fantastic, good of type.
METALIOUS, GRACE.Return to Peyton Place.Messner 1959, pbr Dell 1959. Another sexy “expose” of a small town. In one episode, the unpleasant wife of a local boy recalls her schooldays, when she taunted and enslaved a lesbian schoolmate.
MEYER, GLADYS ELEANOR,The Magic Circle.Knopf, 1944. fco Subtle novel of close friendship between two women; never explicit, and on the borderline for variant interest.
+ MILLAY, KATHLEEN.Against the Wall.Macaulay, 1929. College novel by the sister of the well-known poet (see poetry supplement).
MILLER, WALTER M. “The Lineman” ss in Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1957, (m). Excellent attitudes on homosexuality in general, in short story of isolated men.
MILLER, HENRY.Plexus.Paris, Olympia Press 1953, 2 vols. Chapter 16 of the 2nd Volume is supposed to be devoted to a variant affair. Most of Henry Miller’s books cannot be legally imported into the USA—this is one—and your editors haven’t been to Paris yet. When you go, tell us.
MISHIMA, YUKIO.Confessions of a Mask.New Directions 1958, (m).
+ MITCHELL, S. WEIR.Constance Trescott.N. Y., Century 1900. The plus is to draw attention to an old, overlooked title. Major (for its date) treatment of variant enslavement between two half sisters.
+ MITCHISON, NAOMI.The Delicate Fire.Harcourt, N. Y. 1932. A major writer, and scholar, presents a collection of lovely short stories of ancient Greece; the title story deals with Sappho and her group of girl lovers.
The Corn King and the Spring Queen.Harcourt, 1931, (m).
“Black Sparta” and “Krypteia” inGreek Stories, Harcourt, 1928, (m).
MORAVIA, ALBERTO.The Conformist.Farrar, Straus & Young 1951, pbr Signet 1954. Penetrating study of a fascist whose compulsive drive for power destroys everyone he loves. An interlude between his wife and a friend provides a brief diversion before the macabre ending.
MOORE, HAL.The Naked and the Fair.pbo, Beacon, 1958, scv.
MOORE, PAMELA.Chocolates for Breakfast.Rinehart 1956, pbr Bantam 1957. Candid, shocking story of a young girl’s disintegration; the opening episodes involve her rejection by a teacher on whom she has a crush, and there are variant overtones in her prolonged friendship with a school roommate, Janet’s suicide being the spur which makes Courtney resolve to pull herself together.
MORELL, LEE.Mimi.pbo Beacon Books 1959. Unusually good evening waster about night-club and theatrical people, with both male and female homosexual episodes; handled with subtlety and lightness almost unknown in this publisher’s paperbacks.
+ MORGAN, CLAIRE. (pseud of Patricia Highsmith)The Price of Salt. Coward-McCann, 1952, pbr Bantam 1953, 1959. Fine novel of an affair between two very nice, very courageous, very well-adjusted women whose initial attraction becomes the mainspring of both their lives. The author does not use one single stereotype or cliche; this is probablytheAmerican novel of the lesbian.
MORGAN, NANCY.City of Women, pbo Gold Medal 1952, 1959. Lesbian episodes In a novel of women living in barracks at Pearl Harbor.
MORLEY, IRIS.The Proud Paladin.N. Y. Morrow 1936. Lesbian content vague and doubtful, BAYOR and fco.
MORRO, DON.The Virgin.pbo Beacon 1955, released in 1959. scv.
MOSS, GEOFFREY.That Other Love.Doubleday, 1930. A long-continued affair between Phillida and an older friend breaks off because of the younger woman’s desire for children.
MOTLEY, WILLARD.Knock on Any Door.N. Y. Appleton-Century, 1947, pbr Signet 1953, (m).
+ MURDOCH, IRIS.The Bell.N. Y. Viking 1958, (m). A fine, occasionally funny novel of an Anglican lay church-community centers around Michael Meade, a man of honor, intelligence, and integrity—and a homosexual. His hopes of being ordained as a priest were destroyed when, as a schoolteacher, he became entangled with young Nick; Nick’s appearance at the community destroys Michael’s peace of mind thoroughly, and an obliquely handled relationship between Nick, Michael and a guileless youngster, Toby, spending the summer at the community, eventually destroys the community entirely. But it isn’t all gloom and doom; the level of the writing is highly competent, sometimes wildly hilarious, and through all his difficulties Michael is able to realize that eventually he will “experience again ... that infinitely extended requirement which one human being makes on another.” A book which emphasizes the triumph of love, and one of the recent best. ((Editor’s note; why are the best novels of male homosexuality written by women? Mesdames Renault and Murdoch are giving their best to the men. Is it a question of detachment?))
MURPHY, DENNIS.The Sergeant. Viking 1958, pbr Crest 1959, (m).
MURRAY, WILLIAM.The Fugitive Romans.pbo, Popular Library 1955. Brief variant episode among a Hollywood location crew abroad.
NEILSEN, HELEN.The Fifth Caller.Morrow, 1959. Dr. Lillian Whitehall, metaphysician, is murdered; as each of her five callers is interviewed to find the guilty party, it develops that the dead woman was a cruel, domineering repressed lesbian. Well written, though unsympathetic.
NEFF, WANDA FRAIKEN.We Sing Diana.Boston, Houghton 1928. Story of a girl too inhibited to face her own nature.
NILES, BLAIR.Strange Brother.N. Y. Liveright 1931, pbr Harris Publications 1949, pbr Avon 1952, 1958, 1959.
NIN, ANAIS.Winter of Artifice.Paris, Obelisk Press 1939, also inUnder a Glass Bell, Dutton, 1948. The first edition has 100 pages or so, not included in later editions, in which she recounts her liaison with a famous American writer and43his wife, all disguised, of course. (All of this writer’s work seems to be vaguely tinged with variance.)
Ladders to Fire.Dutton, 1945, 1946.
NORDAY, MICHAEL.Stage for Fools.Vixen Press 1955. pbr tctStrange Thirsts, Beacon 1959. Evening waster about a lush actress making a comeback on a college campus, who revenges herself on an indifferent male by entrapping his girl into a drunken lesbian episode and inviting him to watch the show. A shocker.
Warped.Beacon pbo 1955, 1960. Very apt title; evening waster about a crooked fight game. One sympathetically portrayed lesbian character in the many mixed affairs.
NORMANDIE, ROGER.The Lion’s Den.N. Y. Key 1957. scv.
+ O’BRIEN, KATE.As Music and Splendor.Harper. 1958. Novel of two very different young Irish girls sent to study music on the Continent during the great age of Italian opera; their personal lives differ as widely as their careers, One, Clare Halvey, drifts into a love affair with Luisa Carriaga, a Spanish contralto; their relationship is treated delicately, but with warmth and impersonal sympathy. Excellent for opera lovers and for those who are tired to death of books where every last detail is spelled out as frankly as the law allows.
+ O’DONOVAN, JOAN.Dangerous Worlds.Morrow, 1958. Collection of excellent short stories.
O’HIGGINS, HARVEY.The Story of Julie Cane.Harper, 1924. Explicit, for its day, story of an intense relationship between a schoolmistress and her ward.
OLIVIA (see DOROTHY BUSSY).
O’NEILL, ROSE.The Goblin Woman.N. Y. Doubleday 1930. Fey, symbolic novel of Helga, the Goblin Woman (who represents purity) set down in a society far from pure. There are many lesbian episodes and references to inter-*feminine love. (see poetry supplement.)
O’HARA, NOEL.The Last Virgin.Chariot Books pb 1959. This is a reprint of David George Kin’s “Women Without Men”, containing six of the ten stories; new title, new author, even new copyright date—who’s kidding who? It does not contain the damning introduction, and without it, appears fairly sympathetic. Curious little item.
PACKER, VIN (pseud; see also ANN ALDRICH)Spring Fire.pbo Gold Medal 1952. Now well-known and rather gamy novel of sorority house life and an unhappy lesbian affair between naive freshman Mitch and neurotic Lana.
Whisper His Sin.Gold Medal pbo 1954, (m).
+The Evil Friendship.pbo Crest 1958. Viciously condemnatory novel of two little girls of fourteen who, consequent to their lesbianish attachment, plot together and carry out “a murder club”. Shuddersome, but, alas, well written. (Editorial query; why must so many of the detractors of lesbianism write such good books, while those who defend it are, all to often, of the Carol Hales “quality”?)
The Twisted Ones.pbo, Gold Medal 1959, (m).
PARK, JORDAN. (pseud of Cyril Kornbluth).Valerie.pbo, Lion, 1953, 1957. Minor lesbian episodes in a novel of witch-hunting; the episodes occur at a Witches Sabbat. Evening waster.
PARKER, DOROTHY: “Glory in the Daytime” inAfter Such Pleasures, N. Y., Viking 1934.
PATTON, MARION.Dance on the Tortoise.N. Y., Dial 1930. Boarding-school novel; the heroine, repelled by the emotional friendships around her, throws herself with relief into the arms of a man.
PAVESE, CESARE.Among Women Only.Noonday Press, qpb 1959 ($1.75). Recommended, highly tragic, novel by a writer considered, until his untimely death, one of Italy’s best.
+ PETERS, FRITZ.Finistere.Farrar, Straus & Co 1951, pbr Signet 1953, (m).
+ PETRONIUS,The Satyricon. (the earliest known novel, written about the time of Christ; the last flush of the pagan world.) Trans. William Arrowsmith, University of Michigan Press, 1959. This is also available in a highly expurgated Modern Library edition, n. d. Male, of course, and the Arrowsmith translation is hilarious andveryreadable.
PEN, JOHN.Temptation.(trans. from the Hungarian by John Manheim,) Avon Red and Gold, 1959, (m). Fine picaresque.
PEYREFITTE, ROGER.Special Friendships.NY, Vanguard 1950, (m).
+ PHELPS, ROBERT.Heroes and Orators.N. Y. McDowell & Oblensky 1958. Fine modern novel of family relationships, containing a lesbian character described as the most real, human and sympathetic in recent years; Margot, in love with her ex-husband’s sister Elizabeth. The two women live together, but any intimate relationship between them is disclaimed.
PHILLIPS, THOMAS HAL.The Bitterweed Path.Rinehart 1949, pbr Avon 1954, 1959, (m).
POWELL, DAWN.A Cage for Lovers.Boston, Houghton Mifflin 1957. Mannish, wealthy hypochondriac keeps her nurse-companion in virtual slavery until the younger girl breaks away and marries. Competent novel by a popular author.
PRIEST, J. C.Private School.Beacon pbo 1959 scv.
PRITCHARD, JANET.Warped Women.Beacon pbo 1951, 1956, 1959. Despite the lurid blurb and cover, this is a nice evening waster about an innocent young girl who goes to work for a woman’s health club which is, behind the scenes, an abortion mill run by gangsters. Fronting for the group, an attractive lesbian takes a fancy to the heroine, eventually protects her against the gangster boss at the risk of her own life. The heroine then marries a nice boy who’s been telling her all along that the place is rotten. Suspenseful, interesting.
PROUST, MARCEL.Remembrance of Things Past, the great work of the well-known French homosexual author, is available in many (virtually all except rural-provincial) libraries, numerous college editions, etc. Long sections are variant, male-homosexual or lesbian; bibliography would occupy entirely too much space. Try a stray volume in qpb and see if Proust is your cup of tea—he isn’t everyone’s.
PURTSCHER, NORA.Woman Astride.Appleton-Century, 1934. Woman spends almost her entire life in male disguise. Offbeat, variant rather than explicitly lesbian.
PYKE, RICHARD.The Lives and Deaths of Roland Greer.NY, Boni 1929, (m). Horrifying.
RAVEN, SIMON.The Feathers of Death.London, A. Blond, 1959, Simon & Schuster 1960, (m).
RAYTER, JOE (pseud. of Mary McChesney).Asking for Trouble. Morrow 1955, pbr Pocket Books 1959. Murder mystery. A mannish, hardboiled lesbian plays an important part.
REHDER, JESSIE.Remembrance Way.G P Putnam’s Sons 1956. Retrospective tale in which the heroine recalls a summer in girl’s camp, when she was enslaved simultaneously to a domineering director (woman) and her daughter.
REMARQUE, ERICH MARIA.Arch of TriumphAppleton 1945, pbr Signet 1950, 1959.
+ RENAULT, MARY.Promise of Love.Morrow, 1939. Novel, in a hospital background, contains variant relationship, lightly treated.
The Middle Mist.Morrow, 1945. Excellent, humorous novel, featuring the boyish Leo (Leonora) who, with her46friend Helen, lives on a houseboat quite happily (“It only makes sense for the surplus women to arrange themselves one way or another.”) This is, beyond a doubt, the wittiest, most refreshing book on the list; the girls have problems, but they have them, and solve them, without any well-of-loneliness agonizing. The story is resolved in Leo’s gradual feminization and marriage.
The Last of the Wine.Pantheon, 1956 (m; Greek.).
The King Must Die.Pantheon 1958, pbr Pocket Books 1959. Minor male and female homosexuality in Cretan setting.
The Charioteer.Longmans, 1953, Pantheon hcr 1959. Male, major, femininely delicate. Virtually all of this writer’s work contains some reference, though sometimes remote and slight, to variance.
RENAULT, PAUL.Raw Interludes.Brookwood, 1957, scv.Norelation to Mary Renault; since Renault, Mary, has a double plus, the editors agree we should invent a double minus.
RICE, CRAIG.Having Wonderful Crime.Simon & Schuster, 1943. Hilarious murder mystery leads into the byways and gay bars of Greenwich village.
RICHARDSON, HENRY HANDEL.The End of a Childhood.London, Reinemann, 1934, hcr N. Y. Norton.
The Getting of Wisdom.N. Y. Duffield, 1910. Both are volumes of loosely connected variant short stories.
ROLLAND, ROMAINE.Annette and Sylvie.Holt, 1925. The first volume of a trilogy, this deals with an intense attachment between two young (adolescent) half sisters who meet for the first time in their teens.
RONALD, JAMES.The Angry Woman.Lippincott 1948, Bantam pbr 1950. A businesswoman keeps a young girl reluctantly captivated until the girl commits suicide.
RONNS, EDWARD.The State Department Murders.pbo, Gold Medal 1952, (m) fco.
ROSMANITH, OLGA.Unholy Flame.pbo Gold Medal 1952, (m). fco (But I like this personally very much. A modern Svengali.)
+ ROSS, WALTER.The Immortal.Simon & Schuster 1958, Pocket Books Cardinal Edition 1959, (m).
ROYDE-SMITH, NAOMI.The Tortoiseshell Cat.Boni & Liveright 1925. An unworldly girl’s capture by a predatory lesbian.
The Island.Harper, 1930. Sad, tense book about an ugly, unhappy girl nicknamed “Goosey” and a clinging cousin who will neither love her nor let her go.
RUARK, ROBERT.Something of Value.Doubleday 1955, pbr Pocket Books 1958. Very minor.
RYAN, MARK.Twisted Loves.Bedside Books 1959, pbo, scv.
SABATIER, ROBERT.Boulevard.(Prix de Paris award novel, trans. from French by Lowell Blair). David McKay 1958, pbr Dell 59, (m). Marginal.
SACKVILLE-WEST, VICTORIA.The Dark Island.Doubleday, 1934. Shirin is the over-emotional, unconventional wife of Venn, dour owner of the “dark island”, Storn. He treats Shirin so badly that she seeks companionship, love and affection from Christina, her husband’s secretary; through jealousy (not unmixed with pure sadism) Venn arranges for Christina to be drowned in a boating “accident”. Haunting.
+ SALEM, RANDY.Chris.Beacon pbo, 1959. The plus indicates good of kind, not intrinsic merit. An interesting story of a lesbian triangle—Chris, Dizz, and young Carol. One reader commented that this story was a sort of lesbian dreamworld—these women seemed to live in a society, and a world, completely unmixed with ordinary life at all. Certainly they are all treated as quite the ordinary thing, and there are almost no hints that there is a heterosexual world outside the gay one, which must be taken into account. Certainly it makes no incursions into the novel. Chris, a conchologist, her life complicated by her frigid girl-friend Dizz, suffers and drinks too much and sleeps around until Carol, one of her random pick-ups, decides to stick to her, and eventually frees Chris from this attachment. Good but unreal.
+ SANDBURG, HELGA.The Wheel of Earth.McDowell, Oblensky 1958. Roughly a third of a long novel of Midwestern rural life deals with the lengthy attachment between Frankie Gaddy and an older woman, Genevieve.
SARTON, MAY.A Shower of Summer Days.Rinehart, 1952.
SARTRE, JEAN-PAUL.No Exit.Knopf 1947, qpb Vintage 1955. Play.
SAVAGE KIM.Girl’s Dorm.Vixen Press 1952.
Baby Makes Three.Vixen, 1953. No reports on either of these, but in view of the publisher they are probably evening wasters at best.
SAYERS, DOROTHY L.The Dawson Pedigree.Harcourt 1928, fco.
+ SCHIDDEL, EDMUND.Girl with the Golden Yo-Yo.pbo Berkley 1955, 1959, (m). Also contains some brief analysis of lesbian jazz circles in Germany after WWI.
The Other Side of the Night.pbo Avon 1954-5, Berkley 1959, (m).
SCHMITT, GLADYS.Confessors of the Name.Dial, 1952, pbr Permabooks ca. 1953-55. A relatively minor lesbian character in a long novel of ancient Rome, with explicit48lesbian scenes during a Saturnalia orgy.
A Small Fire.Dial 1958. (m.) minor.
Alexandra.Dial 1947, pbr Pocket Books 1949. Very vague and minor threads of contact in a novel of intense friendship between two women. Emotionally high.
SCOTT, LES.Twilight Women.Arco 1952, pbr Beacon 1956. Evening-waster suspenseful adventure story of a chase-type kidnapping: Rance, the hero, pleasantly entangled with two beautiful Polynesian girls, who eventually take him to a Utopian tropical island where he happily marries both of them. The contact between the girls is incidental and included simply to heighten excitement for male readers, but it’s good fun in a Sax Rohmerish way.
Three Can Love.Arco, 1952.
Touchable.Arco, 1951. Probably much the same as above.
SCULLY, ROBERT.A Scarlet Pansy.N. Y. Faro, 1933, Hesor 1937 hcr, Reprinted and completely rewritten by Royal, no pub. no date, Baltimore, Oppenheimer, 30s and 40s. In 1950, D W Cory called this “the low point of the homosexual novel”. A lot of trash has been written since, which makes this look simply silly. (m). A confusing novel of the “gay” world, including some butchy and peculiar lesbians.
SEELEY, E. S.Sorority Sin.Beacon pbo, 1959. scv.
SELA, LORA. (pseud of Carol Hales)I Am a Lesbian. Saber pbo, 1959. Would-be shocker about a poor innocent girl being pushed into love affairs with brutal boys, raped, etc; by cruel relatives and friends, when all that God wants of her, according to the author, is for her to be a Happy Well-Adjusted Noble Lesbian. This isn’t even scv, since the writers of sexy trash usually know something about sex or trash or both. Read it and snicker.
SETON, ANYA.Katherine.Houghton, 1954. (m. minor)
SHAW, WILENE.The Fear and the Guilt.pbo, Ace, 1954. Softball-playing Ruby brings sweet-leech Christy to her Tobacco Road home. There, to disarm suspicion, Christy allows herself to be first seduced, then married, by Ruby’s father. Sympathetic for a shocker, but oh, my!
SIDGWICK, ETHEL.A Lady of Leisure.Boston, Small, 1914. A passionate, But quite innocent, attachment between women in their twenties.
SIMENON, GEORGES.In Case of Emergency.Doubleday 1958, pbr Dell 1959. A common theme—a good man enslaved by a worthless girl—is treated here by a very good European writer. A subplot deals with the attachment between the girl and her maidservant.