Part 1

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[Transcriber's note: Extensive research found no evidence that the copyright for this book had been renewed.]

Marion Zimmer Bradley

_CHECKLIST_

A complete, cumulative Checklist of lesbian, variant and homosexual fiction, in English or available in English translation, with supplements of related material, for the use of collectors, students and librarians.

table of contents

Editorial; History and purpose of the Checklist 2

List of symbols and abbreviations 6

The complete cumulative Checklist, indexed by author 7

The poetry of Lesbiana; chronological reference list (compiled by Gene Damon) 58

Variant Films 61

Related Publications; the homosexual Press 63

For Collectors Only; a list of book services 64

Paperback Publishers; addresses 65

Hardcover Publishers; addresses 66

Behind the scenes; meet the editors 68

Edited and Published by: MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY Associate Editor: GENE DAMON Cover design and layouts by Kerry Dame

Entire contents copyright, May 1960, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Box 158, Rochester, Texas. All rights reserved.

editorial

THE PURPOSE AND HISTORY OF THE CHECKLIST

Here, in a single volume, it has been our intention to list, document and review every novel dealing, however slightly, with female variance, lesbianism or intense emotional relationships between women. We have also included a majority of the better known novels which, dealing primarily with male homosexuality, are of interest to the collector of variant fiction in general.

In related supplements we have compiled lists of variant poetry, variant films, of the major book services and publishing houses where these books can be obtained, and of the homosexual press.

The titles in the major portion of the Checklist are listed in a single comprehensive index by author. Information includes date published, number of reprints and publisher's name. Brief reviews are included of most titles. An effort has been made in each case to distinguish whether the work under discussion is a novel about lesbianism, whether the variant content has been included mostly for shock effect, or whether (as in some excellent modern novels) homosexual characters appear incidentally to the other main themes of action in the book.

In such a comprehensive listing, reviews must of necessity be brief. For further discussion of many of the titles listed here, with excellent and complete critical analysis of their variant content, the serious student or collector is earnestly urged to invest in the definitive and major work on the subject:

FOSTER, Jeannette Howard; _Sex Variant Women in Literature._ N. Y. Vantage Press, 1956.

Although now officially out of print, this book can occasionally be obtained second hand, and copies will soon be offered for sale through the Daughters of Bilitis publication, THE LADDER. (See appendix.) We have made no effort to give more than cursory reviews of titles which are discussed at length in Dr. Foster's work. However, since the publication of the Foster book, many new novels of lesbianism have been published, and the diligent search of many collectors, working with the Checklist editors, has brought many old ones to light.

We have tried to review in some detail the novels which were omitted from Dr. Foster's work, and to strive for completeness, even at the expense of discriminatory judgment about the excellence or otherwise of the works included. Therefore this Checklist includes many works whose lesbian content was too slight, too subtle--or too "trashy"--to have come within the scope of the scholarly studies of Dr. Foster or the running column, _Lesbiana_, conducted by junior editor Gene Damon in the pages of THE LADDER.

It is our further contention that many novels dealing with male homosexuality come also within the province of the serious collector of lesbiana. We make, however, no claim for completeness for novels which fall within the homosexual, rather than the lesbian province. In general, the male titles included in this list--clearly defined, in each case, by the sign (m)--have been included because they were of special interest to the editors and therefore are presumably of interest to other collectors of lesbiana.

For those who wish a complete list of works dealing with male homosexuality, we suggest the comprehensive bibliography compiled by Noel I. Garde, discussed in the Appendix of Related Publications. Mr. Garde has indexed virtually every homosexual work from antiquity to the latest paperback shocker, and has also performed the mighty task of separating them into categories ... a task from which the Checklist editors have shrunk, though we have made some attempt at classification in our reviews and by awarding a plus sign to books of exceptional value. (For further discussion of this division, please consult the "List of Symbols and Abbreviations" on page 2.)

Most of the reviews in the present listing were written by one of the editors; no attempt has been made to divide the reviews written by MZB from those written by Damon. In general, these reviews have been gathered from so many sources that the awarding of individual credit would be impossible.

This Checklist, 1960, is the last of the cumulative Checklists. Plans at present are to publish brief supplements annually, listing only new titles, new reprints of old titles, or new discoveries of overlooked titles. Since this is the case, we feel that some brief history of the Checklist might be of interest to the readers.

Nearly 10 years ago, in the mailing of the Fantasy Amateur Press Association, a very bitter discussion was raging on the subject of censorship--pro and con. Complicating this discussion, a man who is now dead, and shall therefore be nameless, published a scathing attack on homosexuals. By way of subtle reproof, and partially as a deadpan joke on this man, your senior editor, with Royal Drummond (whose "Digression" was highly praised by Checklist readers last year ...) published a 12-page offset leaflet, with editorials attacking censorship, and extensive reviews of perhaps a dozen of the best known homosexual novels. This leaflet had a cartoon cover and the general light-hearted tone of the publication was indicated by the title, which was _Fairy Tales for Fabulous Faps_. Reaction to this leaflet was mixed, but in general the readers enjoyed it, and said, "Do this again some time -- ". However, soon after this, Mr. Drummond dropped out of the Fantasy Amateur Press Association, and your present editor had no impetus to continue the series single-handed.

Early in the history of the publication known as THE LADDER, your senior editor had the privilege of reviewing the Foster book mentioned above, while the junior editor was in charge of the _Lesbiana_ column. After reading the Foster work, your editor (MZB) resolved to publish a list of the omitted titles; when I began cutting the mimeograph stencils, however, I resolved to review not only the titles which Dr. Foster had omitted, but all of those which I had read, for the purpose of putting into print my own personal opinions and reactions. This first Checklist was called _Astra's Tower #2_, and the number 2 seems to have baffled a good many people--they all wrote in, inquiring about #1. Number 1, however, was a mimeographed booklet of my own fiction, published during my late teens for the FAPA, mentioned above.

Through this first Checklist, I came into contact with Miss Damon, and because paperback lesbiana was blossoming on all the stands, we quickly resolved to publish another Checklist. I had fully intended to give Miss Damon full credit for her work last year; however, the mimeograph work on last year's list was so poor, the quality of the paper so bad, and some unreliable reviewers fouled me up so badly on data, that I refused to foist off any portion of the blame on other shoulders.

The relaxing of censorship of recent years--as documented in the Supreme Court judgment relevant to _Lady Chatterley's over_, etc.--has meant, in recent fiction, fewer taboos and in general a franker treatment of sexual themes. On the whole this is a good thing. However and unfortunately, it has also released a flood of trash and borderline erotica, of no literary worth and "interesting" only for the sexual content. Your editors have conscientiously waded through all this newsstand slush (and believe me, we get no kick out of it) because experience has taught us that even the worst peddlers of commercialized sex-trash sometimes come up with exceptionally well-written, honest and sincere work. For instance, Beacon Books (a subsidiary of Universal Publishing and Distributing Company)--some of whose paperback originals can be called printable only by the uttermost charity,--are currently also publishing the work of Artemis Smith, one of the major writers in the variant field today.

However, actually reviewing the majority of this stuff is impossible. Most of these books are not novels at all. They have impossibly complex plots--or no plots at all--since the story exists only as an excuse for the characters to jump into amorous exercise with the closest male, or female, or sometimes both. This sort of thing, "lesbian" only remotely, belongs more properly to the field of curiosa. One can, of course, display a Place Pigalle post card in a gallery with the Botticelli Venus, and classify them both as "nudes". I personally consider this an insult to the Venus, and the devotee of "feelthy peectures" will find the restraint and taste of fine art too tame for his jaded tastes.

We are unalterably opposed to most censorship--but after wading through almost a hundred books whose only excuse for existence is to provide phony "thrills" for people too inhibited, too ignorant or too fearful to provide their own, well--we think wistfully of some self-imposed standards of taste.

We also realize, flatly and realistically, that too much license in this stuff is going to bring on a wave of public reaction which may impose a sure-enough censorship--making the standards of the 1940s and 1950s look liberal.

Now obviously the field of homosexual literature is going to place a certain emphasis on the sexual problems of humanity which will be quantitatively greater than that of--say--the Western novel, or the detective story. Sex alone has not been made an excuse for consigning any novel to the trashbin. If the treatment is honest, the characters even remotely believable and the purpose of the book seems reasonably genuine, then the quantity of sex is purely a matter for the author's discretion; and be it much, as in the works of March Hastings, Artemis Smith or Henry Miller, or little, as in Iris Murdoch's delicate and subtle THE BELL, or Shirley Jackson's THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE,--we give the book judgment only on its merits as a book.

However, in self-defense, we have had to find a way to dispose of the more repetitive rubbish. Allowing for differences in taste, and granting that many people like their books well-spiced, if there is a reasonably well-written story along with the sex we have called it "Evening waster"--on the grounds that it may very well provide pleasant entertainment for anyone not a hopeless prude. But if the story is just a peg on which to hang up a lot of poorly written, gamy erotic episodes, with no literary value, and just evasive enough to keep the printer out of jail, then we have given it short shrift with the abbreviation "scv"--which cryptic letters are editorial shorthand for "Short Course in Voyeurism"--and have been the basis of a lot of jokes in the tedious business of passing reviews around the editorial staff (The junior and senior editors live a thousand miles apart and have never met; the others who occasionally contribute reviews are scattered from Alabama to Oregon.). So we have to have some fun in the endless correspondence--and "scv" books are fair game.

Regrettably, we are well aware that some people are going to use this designation in precisely the opposite fashion than we intended--go through the list picking out the sexy books and carefully avoiding the others. Well--we shan't spoil your fun. Each to her own taste, as the old lady said when she kissed the cow.

We wish here to give some slight acknowledgment to all those who, over the years since the initiation of this endeavor, have contributed overlooked titles, pointed out our errors, sent comments, criticisms and sometimes cash, laboriously tracked down elusive data, worked as unpaid researchers and stencil-cutters, and in general helped us to feel we were not working in a vacuum.

Special acknowledgments are due to Dr. Jeannette Howard Foster, unfailingly generous and gracious in allowing us to pick her brains; to Leslie Laird Winston, of the Winston Book Service; to the editors of THE LADDER, Del Martin in particular, for helping us to publicize our Checklist, and for allowing us to use reviews run in the _Lesbiana_ column; to Forrest Ackerman, for endless help and encouragement; and to Kerry Dame, whose generous gift of stamps proved invaluable to the heavy load of correspondence necessary to keep this one-woman publishing house rolling. And to all those others, anonymous by choice, who have sent small gifts of cash and stamps, turned up elusive paperbacks for me in news-standless West Texas, contributed reviews and data, and, above all, provided cheer and encouraging support. We hope this Checklist is half as much fun for you to read as it was for us--all things considered--to prepare.

And here at the end I take off my editorial "We" for a special, personal THANK YOU to my collaborator and co-editor, GENE DAMON.

And now, until the first Supplement time, it's time to turn the Checklist over to you. Comments and criticisms are invited.

Marion Z Bradley

List of Symbols and Abbreviations

pbo--paperbacked original; first published in paperback or first English edition in paperback.

pbr--paperbacked reprint.

n.d.--no date listed or date unknown.

ss--short story.

qpb--quality paperback book (as, Grove Press or Vintage).

tct--title changed to (as, _Torchlight to Valhalla_, pbr tct _The Strange Path_).

fco--for completists only; variant content either extremely slight or problematical.

+ before a title indicates a book of considerable value. Occasionally used to call attention to a fine new release or the discovery of an old title overlooked in previous bibliographies. In general, the plus sign has been reserved for books of honest purpose, sincere if not always entirely favorable treatment of the homosexual theme, and some genuine literary merit. In one or two cases, a plus has been given to a book of little intrinsic worth because of some major and exceptional contribution to thought on the variant theme; or to an occasional book for being extremely good entertainment of its kind, even if no masterpiece. We have tried to avoid including only our favorites.

(m) indicates a novel concerned mostly with male homosexuality. A very large proportion of such novels, however, contain some discussion of female variance, or lesbian characters, as well.

BAYOR--Buy at your own risk ... either no accurate data is available or the editors find themselves in hopeless disagreement about its relevance.

Evening Waster--good solid entertainment and reasonably well-written, though worthless as literature.

scv--see editorial for complete discussion of this term. This is the literary ghetto, the gutter books, the commercialized sex trash as distinguished from honest erotic realism.

THE COMPLETE, CUMULATIVE CHECKLIST OF LESBIAN FICTION

ACKWORTH, ROBERT C. _The Moments Between._ pbo, Hillman Books 1959. Characters in a college novel include an instructor--male--who is homosexual, very sympathetically portrayed. Also a subtle, but sympathetic attachment between an unlovely, unloved student and an older woman; the relationship is shown as constructive for both in the end.

+ ADAMS, FAY. _Appointment in Paris._ pbo, N. Y., Gold Medal 1952. An American girl in Paris has a brief affair with a French woman and is thereby enabled to break the hold of her old-maid aunt. She later marries.

ADDAMS, KAY. _Queer Patterns._ pbo, Beacon, 1959. scv. Trashy shocker about young Nora Card, who briefly forsakes her boy friend, Roger, for a corrupt lesbian employer.

_Warped Desires._ pbo, Beacon, 1960. scv. Teen-age Doris goes to a boarding school and is seduced by everyone on the premises, male and female.

ALDRICH, ANN (pseud.)

_We Too Must Love._ pbo Gold Medal 1958.

_We Walk Alone._ pbo, Gold Medal 1955.

Non-fiction studies of the lesbian world, highly subjective, mostly vignettes of gay life in and around Greenwich Village, with some added data about the manners, customs and language of the "gay" world. Good reading, if somewhat biased.

see also VIN PACKER

ALEXANDER, DAVID. _Madhouse in Washington Square._ Lippincott, 1958. Mystery novel of high quality, introducing a pair of lesbians for window-dressing.

ANDERSON, HELEN. _Pity for Women._ N. Y., Doubleday, 1937. An unhappy and tense relationship among three women, inhabitants of a women's residence club in New York.

ANDERSON, SHERWOOD. _Dark Laughter._ N. Y., Boni & Liveright, 1925, pbr Pocket Books, 1952. Very slight.

_Poor White_; N. Y., B. W. Huebsch, 1920, hcr in The Portable Sherwood Anderson, qpb Viking Press P42. In the course of a novel about the rise of a "shantytown boy's" rise to prosperity, there is a brief but extremely sympathetic portrait of the lesbian, Kate Chancellor; the hero's wife, Clara, is briefly captivated by Kate during her college days.

ANDREYA, GUY. _Tormented Venus._ N. Y. Key Pub. Co 1958. scv.

ANONYMOUS. _Adam and Two Eves._ Macauley Co, N. Y., 1934, pbr Beacon Books 1956. Evening waster. Neurotically heartbroken woman mourning her dead lover becomes entangled with a married woman because a woman's love does not constitute infidelity to the dead; once initiated she becomes entangled in a long affair _a trois_, from which she is eventually extricated (somewhat the worse for wear) by a man she later marries.

ANTHOLZ, PEYSON. _All Shook Up._ pbo, Ace Books, 1958, (m). Alan, small-town teen-age rowdy, fights against his friendship with newcomer Howard Sirche, because it is rumored that Howard, who avoids women, is homosexual. Very good of its kind.

ANTON, CAL. _The Private Life of a Strip Tease Girl._ pbo, Beacon 1959, scv. Just what it sounds like. Among her many "affairs" is a brief episode with another girl.

ASQUITH, CYNTHIA. "The Lovely Voice". ss, in _This Mortal Coil._ Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin. Fantasy, 1947

BAKER, DENYS VAL. _A Journey With Love._ Bridgehead Books, 1955, pbr Crest Books 1956. fco. The hero's first marriage fails because of his wife's insistence that a woman friend shall share their home. Nothing is explicit.

BAKER, DOROTHY. _Trio._ Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co, 1943, hcr Sun Dial 1945, pbr Penguin Books 1946. Tells of the captivation of a young woman by an unscrupulous literary agent who also happens to be a lesbian. Highly defamatory.

_Young Man with A Horn._ Boston; Houghton Mifflin, 1938, pbr Signet 1953. Very minor lesbian incident in a jazz novel.

+ BALDWIN, JAMES. _Giovanni's Room._ Dial 1956, pbr Signet 1959, (m). An American boy in Paris fights against his affair with a young Italian, Giovanni; his fear and resistance to this relationship leads to separation, tragedy and their separate destruction. A powerful, tender and tragic book.

BALDWIN, MONICA. _The Called and the Chosen._ Farrar, Straus _&_ Cudahy, N. Y., 1957, pbr Signet 1958. A good study of repression and frustration in convent life, containing passim the story of Sister Helena, novice-mistress; although her behavior was strictly correct even for a nun, she once inspired such violent passions in her juniors that she was removed from this office. The heroine refers to Sister Helena, after her death, as "the one human being I ever loved".

BALZAC, HONORÉ DE. _Cousin Bette._ Classic; many standard editions and translations. The story of a neurotic spinster's half-realised passion for a woman friend.

_The Girl with the Golden Eyes._ Many standard editions and translations, including pbr Avon Books 1957, (trans. Ernest Dowson.) Shocker of the 19th century, dealing with the passion of the Chevalier de Marsay for a strange, unspoilt girl, Paquita--who is virtually enslaved to a sinister lesbian Countess.

_Seraphita._ London, J.W. Dent & Sons, 1897; also as above. A romance of an angelic hermaphrodite. All of these are classics of world literature, as well as the literature of variance, and are apt to be available even in small libraries.

+ BANNON, ANN.

_Odd Girl Out._ pbo, Gold Medal, 1957, 1960.

_I am a Woman._ pbo, Gold Medal, 1959.

_Women in the Shadows._ pbo, Gold Medal, 1959.

These three form a single, connected narrative, although any of the three novels can be read as a self-contained story. The first volume introduces the heroine of the series, Laura Landon, at college; where, in undergoing an affair with her roommate, lovely but frigid Beth, she discovers her homosexuality. Softened by the affair, Beth marries, and Laura runs away. In the second book, Laura, in Greenwich Village, is sharing an apartment, with Marcie, a divorcee, entirely "straight" who plays Laura along strictly for kicks; Laura suffers under this treatment for a long time, then runs away again to shack up with a butch-type Village character, Beebo. In the third book, Laura and Beebo have been living together for two years; Laura is tiring of this lengthy affair and cheats on Beebo with a colored dancer named Tris, while Beebo, to win Laura back, resorts to such trickery as staging a phony "rape" ... inflicting wounds on herself in search of sympathy. Tiring of this life, Laura runs away again, this, time to marry a male homosexual friend, Jack, in a search for stability and permanence. The whole story invites comparison with Weiraugh's THE SCORPION: homosexuality per se is not attacked, but the drawbacks of the life, and the dangers and difficulties to anyone trying to adjust him-or-herself to that life, are frankly and brutally delineated; there is a pervasive air of dissatisfaction, or resignation, and gradual withdrawal; and the ending of the third book is unsatisfactory and hardly complete. Nevertheless, the impact of these books, particularly when read all together, is considerable; Miss Bannon's grasp of character, technique and construction improve with each novel. Despite wild improbabilities and gimmicky, contrived situations, these are perhaps the major contribution to lesbian literature in the paperback field anywhere.

+ BARNES, DJUNA. "Dusie", ss in _American Esoterica_, NY, Macy-Masius, 1927. This collection also contains short stories of (m) interest.