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Lesbian Pulp Fiction book cover
Lesbian Pulp Fiction
The Sexually Intrepid World of Lesbian Paperback Novels, 1950-1965
2005
First Published
3.80
Average Rating
415
Number of Pages
Long before the rise of the modern gay movement, an unnoticed literary revolution was occurring between the covers of the cheaply produced lesbian pulp paperbacks of the post–World War II era. In 1950, publisher Fawcett Books founded its 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. For women leading straight lives, here was confirmation that they were not alone and that darkly glamorous, "gay" places like Greenwich Village existed. 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. In the overheated prose typical of the genre, this collection documents the emergence of a lesbian subculture in postwar America.
Avg Rating
3.80
Number of Ratings
265
5 STARS
28%
4 STARS
34%
3 STARS
31%
2 STARS
5%
1 STARS
3%
goodreads

Authors

Valerie Taylor
Author · 9 books

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name Valerie Taylor is the pen name of Velma Young (1913–1997), author of the lesbian pulp classics Whisper Their Love (1957), The Girls in 3-B (1959), World Without Men (1963), Journey to Fulfillment (1964), and Ripening (1988). With the $500 proceeds of her first novel, Hired Girl (1953), Taylor bought a pair of shoes, two dresses, and hired a divorce lawyer. After leaving her husband, she kicked off a prolific career as the author of pulp fiction novels, poetry (under the name Nacella Young), and romances (under the name Francine Davenport). A longtime activist for gay and lesbian rights, she was a co-founder of Mattachine Midwest and the Lesbian Writers Conference in Chicago. (source)

March Hastings
Author · 4 books
Writing in New York City in the 1950s and 60s, March Hastings, a pseudonym of Sally Singer, was one of the most prolific authors of the lesbian pulp era. She now lives in Florida.
Jill Emerson
Author · 3 books

A pseudonym used by Lawrence Block. Block writes: "Jill Emerson’s seven-book body of work ranges from sensitive lesbian fiction (Enough of Sorrow) and candid erotica (Threesome) to mainstream contemporary fiction (A Week as Andrea Benstock). Both [Jill and Lawrence Block] are deeply grateful to the heroine of Getting Off for providing them with the opportunity to work together one more time.

Joan Ellis
Author · 1 book

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

Artemis Smith
Author · 3 books

see also under Annselm L.N.V. Morpurgo

Miriam Gardner
Author · 1 book
A pseudonym for Marion Zimmer Bradley.
Kay Martin
Author · 1 book

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name Pseudonym of Adela Maritano.

Anne Herbert
Author · 1 book

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

Ann Bannon
Ann Bannon
Author · 7 books

Ann Bannon (pseudonym of Ann Weldy) is an American author and academic. She is known for her lesbian pulp novels, which comprise The Beebo Brinker Chronicles and earned her the title "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction." Bannon was featured in the documentaries Before Stonewall (1984) and Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (1992)

Brigid Brophy
Brigid Brophy
Author · 12 books

Brigid Antonia Brophy, Lady Levey (12 June 1929, in Ealing, Middlesex, England – 7 August 1995, in Louth, Lincolnshire, England) was an English novelist, essayist, critic, biographer, and dramatist. In the Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Novelists since 1960, S. J. Newman described her as "one of the oddest, most brilliant, and most enduring of [the] 1960s symptoms." She was a feminist and pacifist who expressed controversial opinions on marriage, the Vietnam War, religious education in schools, sex (she was openly bisexual), and pornography. She was a vocal campaigner for animal rights and vegetarianism. A 1965 Sunday Times article by Brophy is credited by psychologist Richard D. Ryder with having triggered the formation of the animal rights movement in England. Because of her outspokenness, she was labeled many things, including "one of our leading literary shrews" by a Times Literary Supplement reviewer. "A lonely, ubiquitous toiler in the weekend graveyards, she has scored some direct hits on massive targets: Kingsley Amis, Henry Miller, Professor Wilson Knight." Brophy was married to art historian Sir Michael Levey. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1984, which took her life 11 years later at the age of 66.

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