The Cutprice Guignol

“Now there came to her mind certain phrases that she had heard in the barracks. Disagreeable remarks about Ann and Petit, and Claude too. Expressions she had read in books. She had never paid much attention to them, she had never understood them, but now everything was clear. She understood. No, Claude had invented nothing last night. Just as there were homosexual men, there were homosexual women…”

– Women’s Barracks, Tereska Torrès

Through the 1950s and early 1960s, if you were searching for something to read on a long bus journey, you might browse the collection of pulp fiction novels on display on the shelves and stands of the bus terminal. Amongst these books, a few covers might have stood out above the rest (or, at least, they certainly would have to me) – scantily-clad women, draped over each other, with scandalous subtitles like “Was It Right to Love Her Brother’s Wife So Passionately?” and “In Love With a Woman: Must Society Reject Me?”. Though mainstream depictions of lesbian love and sex in popular media might seem like a more contemporary invention, these pulpy 1950s novels earned a prominent place in pop culture – and created space for lesbians and other women loving women to see themselves in popular fiction for the first time.

During the Second World War, the American military distributed small, easily-portable paperbacks to people in the forces, which laid the groundwork for what would become known as “pocket books” in the following decade. Publishing houses picked up on the trend in the post-war period and began releasing a steady stream of novels that were cheap to produce, easy to read, and, most prominently, often scandalous in nature – much like the pulp magazines that preceded them in the first half of the twentieth century, this so-called “pulp fiction” took on topics that were less commonly explored in more highbrow media, such as drug use, sex, and, perhaps most significantly, homosexuality.

The first of these paperbacks to address a lesbian relationship in an explicit fashion was Women’s Barracks, by Tereska Torrès; Torrès, a French author, had worked as a secretary for the Free French Forces in London during the Second World War, and, in the late 1940s, her husband encouraged her to publish her wartime diaries. Though Torrès herself didn’t view the book as an explicitly lesbian-centric novel (dismissing American readers as “too easily shocked”), the book did feature Claude, a lesbian character, as well as depicting a number of romantic encounters between women. And it was this aspect of the book which was heavily promoted by the front cover upon initial release by Gold Medal Books, depicting four women in various states of undress:

Women’s Barracks is often quoted as the first bonafide paperback bestseller, selling more than two million copies in the first five years of it’s release – though it was not without controversy. The book was outright banned in Canada for “a description of lewdness from beginning to end”, and faced further censorship in the USA for “promoting moral degeneracy”; the book narrowly avoided a ban in America after a new edition was hastily rushed out in 1952, including a narrator character who regularly offered disapproving comment on lesbianism. The book was framed as a moral lesson on the issue of same-sex relationships between women to dodge further censorship – but, despite moral panic surrounding the book’s contents, Women’s Barracks had proved, without a doubt, that lesbian fiction promised impressive returns for paperback publishers – provided it skirted the scrutiny of censors.

A number of releases, featuring lesbian relationships along with the same suggestive covers as Women’s Barracks, were rushed out in the years following Tereska Torres’ success, many of them written by and for men, and the vast majority approaching lesbianism as a scandalous social oddity that had to be examined in great and titillating detail for the good of readers everywhere. Part of the reason behind this, of course, was the negative cultural stereotypes surrounding lesbians and same-sex relationships in the USA in general, but, more specifically, publishers faced prosecution for distributing content that could have been viewed as promoting homosexuality by post, where many of the books were distributed to sellers. This promotion could stretch to even positive depictions of gay relationships, which helped develop the formula which would come to define lesbian pulp fiction in the following years.

Perhaps the earliest example of this specific formula is Spring Fire, by Marijane Meaker, writing under the pseudonym Vin Packer. After the wild success of Women’s Barracks, the editor of Gold Medal Books, Dick Carroll reached out to then-proofreader Meaker to write another lesbian-centric story. The story, based on a real-life affair Meaker had in boarding school as a teenager, follows Mitch as she pledges to a sorority and meets Leda. They soon begin an affair, using relationships with college boys as a cover for their unfolding romance, until they are caught in a compromising position by their sorority sisters. Mitch is swiftly institutionalized, and realizes quickly that she was never actually in love with Leda at all. Thank goodness for that.

In an introduction to a re-printing of Spring Fire in 2004, Meaker explained that Carroll insisted on certain plot details in order for the book to pass postal inspection at the time – that the main character must realize they were never a lesbian at all, and that at least one of the characters involved in the romance had to be depicted as “sick or crazy”. Characters could not end a story both gay and comfortable – they either had to turn to straightness, or end up dead or otherwise suffering profoundly for their homosexual ways. Within these boundaries, Meaker was able to tell a moderately explicit lesbian romance story, and the huge popularity of the book after its release (selling more than one and a half million copies) cemented the lesbian pulp genre as an especially lucrative one for the new paperback publishing industry.

And so, the lesbian pulp fiction genre began to take flight. The formula that had proved so profitable in Spring Fire – of a lesbian romance that ends in tragedy, straightness, or both – was reproduced dozens of times by many different authors, earning a place alongside other lurid tales in the paperback, pocket book stands. Salacious titles such as Satan Was a Lesbian and Lesbian Witch filled out the genre, many of them written by men under a female pseudonym, usually featuring a male protagonist who offered men a voyeuristic and often completely unrealistic look into lesbian relationships. Featuring harmful tropes that would go on to define lesbians in popular culture in the decades to come – such as the predatory butch woman, the sex-starved straight woman turning to lesbianism in a college dorm or woman’s prison, or the inevitable proto-Bury Your Gays trope in full flight – the books, according to a writer in the New York Times in the early 1960s, offered readers access to “two immoral women for the price of one”.

But, amongst these titles were books written by lesbians and for lesbians. Despite the censorship Spring Fire faced, it created space for lesbian and bisexual women to write semi-truthful accounts of the experience of loving women in the 1950s and 60s. With the protections of the newfound popularity of the genre as cover, lesbian authors were finally able to depict some aspects of their real experience, amongst the hundreds of books published by and for men.

Patricia Highsmith, writing under the pseudonym Claire Morgan, published The Price of Salt, which would later go on to be adapted into the award-winning 2015 movie Carol. Elaine Williams released the semi-autobiographical Sloane Britain series, depicting a lesbian woman navigating life in publishing. Valerie Taylor included specific mention of actual gay bars and locales in Chicago in several of her lesbian novels. Though constrained by the rules that demanded unhappy endings, some writers went on to subvert their original releases later in their careers – Sally Singer, writing as March Hastings, re-released her 1958 novel Three Women in the late 1980s, including the happy ending for her lesbian characters as she had always intended. Due to the dismissal of these paperbacks as less significant in terms of literary depth than other books at the time, these stories often went under the radar, avoiding too much scrutiny from censors and critics alike. Despite the fact that many readers and writers of this fiction were closeted, the lesbian pulp fiction novel offered, at last, an easily-accessible place to explore and navigate same-sex desire and love.

Marijane Meaker, writing under the new pseudonym Ann Aldrich, created a series of books exploring the lives of lesbians in the latter half of the 1950s – she described getting “boxes” of letters from other lesbian and bisexual women, a far greater response than she imagined possible.

Amongst the letters she received was one from Ann Bannon, another author who Meaker encouraged to submit her own manuscript to Gold Medal Press. Bannon’s proposal was accepted, and shortly afterwards, she began publishing the Beebo Brinker series – the main character, Beebo Brinker, was, as Bannon described her, “the butch of her dreams”, an archetypical butch woman who stood at six feet tall with an impressive physique, dressed almost entirely in men’s clothes and who pursued romantic relationships with women. The six books in which Beebo Brinker appears became iconic pieces of lesbian literature, bucking the trend of butch women as predators and corrupters, and depicting them instead as self-assured and admirable.

What made the Beebo Brinker series and, by extension, the novels written by lesbian and bisexual women in the genre during this period so important, however, was their ability to reach people in corners of the country where LGBTQ communities were far more limited and secretive. In an interview with Clean Sheets in 2003, Ann Bannon remarked on the fan mail she received as she published her books throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s: “It wasn’t just in the large urban centers, where GLBT youth had at least a fighting chance to find each other. It was in Economy, Indiana and Wagontire, Oregon, where they were isolated and in real need of connection, assurance, and just basic information”. Through these books, lesbian women could find someone to identify with, the promise that they weren’t alone – as Bannon said, “the most important things they learned were that 1) they weren’t unique and doomed to lifelong isolation, 2) the lurid cover art to the contrary notwithstanding, they weren’t “abnormal,” and 3) there was hope for a happy life”. These books were accessible, they were cheap, they were easily hidden, and, most crucially, they opened the door to access real experiences of lesbianism and women loving women.

And, in the decades following the heyday of lesbian pulp fiction, many lesbian scholars and writers have reflected on the importance of these books in their own lives – Katherine Forrest describes, in 1957, coming across one of Ann Bannon’s books, pushing through a “gauntlet of fear” to purchase it, and how it “opened the door to [her] soul and taught [her] who [she] was”.

Towards the end of the 1960s, the gay rights movement began to pick up steam in the USA, and the lesbian pulp novel began to fall out of fashion as censorship regarding gay relationships in literature began to ease – the secrecy and tragedy depicted in these novels no longer entirely representative of lesbian experience in America, or as appealing to gay and bisexual women looking for more positive representations. Iconic pieces of lesbian literature such as Stone Butch Blues and Dykes to Watch Out For filled the gap, offering an explicit look at lesbian life less defined by censorship and editor interference.

However, many of the books from this golden age of lesbian literature have been republished in the past couple of decades, with the lurid cover art receiving a place in kitsch retro pop culture. Many collectors of the genre still seek out the original paperback publications as souvenirs of lesbian culture past, and, with many of the writers who populated the genre still alive today, the lesbian pulp fiction genre presents a profoundly vital connection to lesbian history and literature of the 20th century.

More of My Writing on Lesbian Literature:

Lisa Ben and America’s First Gay Magazine, Vice Versa

Radclyffe Hall and the Censorship of The Well of Loneliness

Sources and Further Reading:

Cover Charge: Selling Sex and Survival in Lesbian Pulp Fiction by Melissa Sky

Lesbian Pulp Fiction by Katherine Forrest

Pulp fiction: Valerie Taylor, lesbian literature and 1950s America by Talking Humanities

The Lesbian Pulp Fiction That Saved Lives by Natasha Frost

Pulp Fiction Helped Define American Lesbianism by Erin Blakemore

Strange Sisters: The Art of Lesbian Pulp Fiction 1949-1969 by Jaye Zimet

(header image via Amazon)