Lesbian Pulp Fiction (Mills & Boon Spice): First edition

By Katherine V. Forrest

Published: March 2014

ISBN: 9781472090577

  • Through the darkness, you can see figures gathered in twos and threes – the glowing tip of a cigarette, a close-manicured hand draped over a shoulder, heads turning to study the new arrival. Someone moves toward you, snapping a lighter open. Step into the twilight world of lesbian pulps.

    In 1950, Fawcett founded their Gold Medal imprint, inaugurating the reign of lesbian pulp fiction. These were the books that small-town lesbians and prurient men bought by the millions – cheap, easy to find in drugstores, and immediately recognizable by their lurid covers: often a hard-looking brunette standing over a scantily-clad blonde or a man gazing in tormented lust at a lovely, unobtainable lesbian. For women leading straight lives, here was their confirmation that they were not alone and that darkly glamorous, “gay” places like Greenwich Village existed. In the over-heated prose typical of the genre, these books document the emergence of a lesbian subculture in postwar America. Some – especially those written by lesbians – offered sympathetic and realistic depictions of “life in the shadows,” while others (no less fun to read now) were smutty, sensational tales of innocent girls led astray. Grande dame of lesbian literature Katherine V. Forrest presents a rich survey of the best of the pulps, including work by Ann Bannon, Vin Packer, Marion Zimmer Bradley (writing as Miriam Gardner), Brigid Brophy, and many others.

    Contains:
    Tereska Torres: Women’s Barracks
    Vin Packer: Spring Fire
    Anne Herbert: Summer Camp
    Sloane Britain: These Curious Pleasures
    Joan Ellis: The Third Street
    Randy Salem: Chris
    Artemis Smith: The Third ex
    Valerie Taylor: The Girls in 3-B
    Valerie Taylor: Return to Lesbos
    Miriam Gardner: The Strange Women
    Dorcas Knight: The Flesh Is Willing
    Kay Martin: The Whispered Sex
    Fay Adams: Appointment in Paris
    Brigid Brophy: The ing of a Rainy Country
    March Hastings: Three Women
    Shirley Verel: The Dark Side of Venus
    Della Martin: Twilight Girl
    Paula Christian: Edge of Twilight
    Paula Christian: Another Kind of Love
    Ann Bannon: Beebo Brinker

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