Part 2

_Nightwood._ N. Y., Harcourt 1937, hcr New Directions n.d. A well-known and excellent lesbian novel laid in Paris.

+ BARR, JAMES. _Derricks._ NY, Greenberg 1951, (m) hcr Pan, 1957. Although those short stories all deal with male homosexuality, their coherent, fresh and constructive philosophy make this a book of primary importance for every reader.

_Quatrefoil._ N. Y., Greenberg, 1950, (m).

_Game of Fools._ ONE, 1954, 1955.

BARRY, JEROME. _Malignant Stars._ N. Y., Doubleday, 1960. Signe, a handsome Valkyrie-type girl, is found dead, and the note beside her body is apparently a love letter from her roommate Lyn; the suspicion that Lyn is her lover and murderer forms the main theme of the plot. Well done.

BAUM, VICKI. _Theme for Ballet._ N. Y., Doubleday 1958, pbr Dell 1959, (m). Minor but excellent.

_The Mustard Seed._ Dial 1953, pbr Pyramid 1956 (m minor).

BEER, THOMAS. _Mrs Egg and Other Barbarians._ Knopf, 1933. Rarer than hen's teeth--lesbian humor.

BELLAMANN, HENRY. _King's Row._ N. Y., Simon & Schuster, 1940, (m).

BELOT, ADOLPHE. _Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife._ Paris, Dentu 1870, Chicago, Laird & Lee 1891. The wife remains a "miss", refusing her husband's approaches because of her attachment to another woman. Typically the husband drowns this monstrous creature (other woman) during an ostensible seaside rescue.

BENNETT, ARNOLD. _Elsie and the Child._ N. Y., Doran, 1924. "Common sense" treatment of an attachment between Elsie the housemaid, and a girl of twelve, which subsides when the little girl is sent to school.

_The Pretty Lady._ N. Y., Doran 1918. A subtle picture of indirect variance between two women in wartorn Paris.

BERKMAN, SYLVIA. _Blackberry Wilderness._ N. Y., Doubleday, 1959. Esoteric, melancholy, beautifully written short stories, of which two are overtly lesbian in content.

BERTIN, SYLVIA. _The Last Innocence._ (Trans. by Marjorie Dean). N Y McGraw Hill, 1955. Story of Paula, a member of a French provincial family. "The refreshing thing is that Paula is treated as a matter of course ... that she wears trousers, hates men, etc. is presented with no more excuse or explanation than the individual foibles of the rest of the family."

BESTER, ALFRED. _Who He?_ N. Y., Doubleday 1955, pbr Berkley 1956, (m) tct. _The Rat Race_. Tense, tightly plotted novel of split personality. The hero's housemate is a deeply sublimated homosexual who cracks up when Jake gets a girl; this episode snaps the high pitch of tightrope tension and precipitates the denouement of the novel. Excellent.

BISHOP, LEONARD. _Creep Into thy Narrow Bed._ Dial 1954, pbr Pyramid 1956. Story of a vicious abortion racket; woven into the story is the sympathetically treated story of a young lesbian's self-realization. Very good of kind.

BODIN, PAUL. _All Woman's Flesh_ (trans. from the French of Le Voyage Sentimental, by Lowell Bair.) pbo Berkley 1957.

_The Sign of Eros_ (trans. from French) Putnam 1953, pbr Berkley 1955.

Both of these involve a man's attachment to two women who have some homosexual contact, but the emphasis is heterosexual, rather than lesbian.

BOLTON, ISABEL. "Ruth and Irma", ss in The New Yorker, Jan 26, 1947; also in Donald Webster Cory's _21 Variations on a Theme_.

BOTTOME, PHYLLIS. _Jane._ Vanguard, 1957. Story of a street urchin, including lesbian episodes in a girl's reformatory.

BOURDET, ÉDOUARD. _The Captive._ N. Y., Brentano's 1926. Drama based on a triangle--man, wife, and a woman who is winning the affections of the latter.

BOURJAILY, VANCE. _The End of My Life._ Scribner's 1947, pbr Bantam 1952, (m).

_The Violated._ Dial 1958, pbr Bantam 1959, (m).

_The Hound of Earth._ Scribner 1955, pbr Permabooks, 1956, (m). Also includes a minor, and unsympathetic lesbian character.

BOWEN, ELIZABETH. _The Hotel._ N. Y. Dial 1928. A shy young girl sent to catch a husband at a fashionable hotel is, instead, captivated by a sophisticated woman.

BOWLES, JANE. _Two Serious Ladies._ N. Y. Knopf, 1943. The emancipation of an inhibited American housewife.

BOYLE, KAY. "The Bridegroom's Body" ss in _The Crazy Hunter_, Harcourt 1938, 1940. Also qpb, Beacon Press, 1958, (m).

_Gentlemen, I Address you Privately._ NY, Smith 1933, (m).

_Monday Night._ N. Y. Harcourt 1938, hcr New Directions, n.d. Brief account of a lesbian affair through the eyes of a child.

BRADLEY, MARION Z. "Centaurus Changeling" in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April, 1954. Science Fiction novel; intensely emotional relationship between three wives of alien bureaucrat leads to jealousy and tragedy when the eldest, Cassiana, takes an outsider into their home and makes a favorite of her.

_The Planet Savers_, in Amazing Stories, Dec. 1958, (m). Science fiction of split personality, one equivocally homosexual.

BRAND, MAX. (pseud of Frederick Faust). _The Night Horseman._ G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1920, hcr Dodd, Mead 1952, pbr Pocket Books 1954, (m). Unusual Western story of a strange cowboy who has an almost supernatural influence on horses and other men; his foster father mysteriously declines when he leaves, makes a miraculous recovery when he returns home. Subtle and good of its kind.

BRINIG, MYRON. _The Looking Glass Heart._ Sagamore, 1958. One lesbian episode, treated vaguely. (Minority report says that nevertheless it is so clearly and well done that the book is worth anyone's reading.)

BRITAIN, SLOAN. _The Needle._ pbo Beacon Books, 1959. Overly contrived shocker about Gina, a young girl who falls simultaneously into narcotics, lesbianism, prostitution and the hands of a weird couple dabbling in incest. Evening waster, rather better than most but leaves a bitter taste.

+ _First Person, Third Sex._ pbo Newsstand Library 1959. Very well-written novel of Paula Harman, young schoolteacher coming to terms with her life as a lesbian through bitter experience. Don't let the lurid paperback covers and blurb scare you off, this is a NOVEL--well worth hard covers and a steal at 35c.

BROCK, LILYAN. _Queer Patterns._ Greenberg 1935, pbr Avon 1951, 1952. Purple-patched sloppily sentimental tale of Sheila, beautiful young actress with a perfect husband who nevertheless loses her heart to Nicoli, a stereotype lesbian complete with tuxedo. They part to avoid gossip and live unhappily ever after.

BROMFIELD, LOUIS. _The Rains Came._ N. Y. Collier 1937, pbr Bantam 1952. In a long novel of India there is a brief but important episode involving two old missionary ladies. The elder, an engaging old battleax, muses as she tucks the younger and sillier into bed that her friend had never understood why they had been driven out of the school where they had, as young girls, been teaching. Ironically, the nice old grim one is killed in a flood while the silly one remains to pester everybody.

_Mister Smith_, Harper, 1951; no pbr on record, but your editor has owned one--perhaps an "Armed Forces" edition? (m). Four men, marooned on a desert island in WW2.

+ BROPHY, BRIGID. _King of a Rainy Country._ Knopf. 1957. Poignant novel of a young girl who lives with Neale, a young male homosexual, out of wedlock. They both become enamored with a portrait of Cynthia, a girl out of the childhood of the heroine....

BROWN, WENZELL. _Prison Girl._ pbo, Pyramid, 1958. One of many books documenting in painful detail the abuses prevalent in the women's prison system, with special attention to the undeniable fact that the system breeds various sexual aberrations. A few of these books are excellent. This one isn't.

BROWNRIGG, GAWEN. _Star Against Star._ N. Y., Macaulay, 1936. Story of a girl conditioned from childhood to lesbian affairs, first by an overly seductive mother, then by a school friend. The book has the doom-ridden atmosphere of its day, and is emotional and somewhat over-written.

BURNS, VINCENT G. _Female Convict._ Macaulay 1934, pbr Pyramid 1959. More women in prison and the unfortunate relationships developing among them.

BURT, STRUTHERS. _Entertaining the Islanders._ N. Y. Scribners, 1933. Sophisticated, satirical, novel in which a man becomes aware that his ex-sweetheart has been captivated by another woman.

+ BUSSY, DOROTHY. _Olivia._ (by Olivia). Wm. Sloane Associates, 1949, Berkley pbr 1955, 1957, 1958, 1959. An English schoolgirl, sent to boarding school in Paris, becomes an unwitting third party to a long-standing affair between Julie and Cara, the two schoolmistresses. Julie's response to the girl, and Cara's jealousy, and suicide, form the main events of the story, which is told with delicate restraint, after a retrospect of many years, as Olivia, now herself a lesbian, has come to understand the procession of events.

CAIN, JAMES M. _Serenade._ Knopf 1937, pbr Signet ca. 1953, (m).

CAINE, HALL. _The Bondsman._ R.F. Fenno & Co, ca. 1890; other editions available, frequently very cheap secondhand. Called a "Modern Saga", this is laid in 18th-Century Iceland. Two half-brothers, Jason the Red and Michael Sunlocks, sons of the same man by different mothers, grow up knowing of one another's existence, but unknown to each other personally. Through a series of saga-like coincidences, they fall in love with the same woman, and are eventually exiled together to the sulphur mines--Iceland's prison colony--still unaware of each other's real identity. There Jason undergoes a psychological and emotional upheaval which can only be described as "falling in love" with Michael, who is still known to him only as Prisoner A-25, not as his hated brother. This story is probably more explicit, emotionally, than anything written before the 20th century and the freedom given by Freud to the emotions of novelists. Recommended.

_The Deemster._ Rand McNally, 1888, Chicago; D. Appleton, 1888; numerous other editions, (m). A glorified friendship between two cousins ends in murder.

CALDWELL, ERSKINE. _Tragic Ground._ Little, Brown & Co, 1944, pbr Signet 1948, fco.

CAPOTE, TRUMAN. _Breakfast at Tiffany's._ Random House 1958, pbr Signet 1959. In the story of a promiscuous, rather pathetic girl, a sadistic lesbian neighbor brings on violent events. Everything very subtle and indirect.

_Other Voices, Other Rooms._ Random House 1948, pbr Signet 1959. Young boy slowly falling under the influence of a decadent uncle who is a transvestite. Macabre.

CARCO, FRANCIS. _Depravity._ pbo Berkley 1957.

_Infamy._ pbo Berkley 1958.

Both of these books hint at lesbianism on the cover blurbs, but are, rather, highly risque French novels with brief, irrelevant and heterosexually oriented contact between women characters strictly for voyeuristic effect.

CARPENTER, EDWARD. _Iolaus_; _an Anthology of Friendship._ N. Y., Albert & Charles Boni, 1935, (m). Listed as "the first of its kind", this is said also to be "very vague and old-fashioned."

+ CASAL, MARY. _The Stone Wall. An Autobiography._ Chicago, Eyncourt Press, 1930. In casual, conversational and entirely frank form, a woman born in 1865 (and therefore, at the time of writing, in her sixties) tells the story of her entire life as a lesbian. With the exception of "slightly autobiographical"--and always greatly disguised--fiction, this is probably the earliest such memoir in the literature. The writing is highly competent and professional, (subtly denying the author's insistence that she was not a writer;) and filled with most interesting revelations about the lesbian world of New York and Paris at the turn of this century. Unfortunately the book is rare and expensive, but it stands alone as a classic of its kind.

CHAMALES, TOM T. _Go Naked in the World._ N. Y. Scribners 1959. Nick Stratton, wounded veteran, returns to find that his girl friend is a call-girl and a lesbian.

CHANDLER, RAYMOND. _The Big Sleep._ Knopf 1939, pbr Pocket Books 1950, and others. (m). The bizarre murder of a homosexual hoodlum, and the interrogation of his boy friend, form important sequences in this hard-boiled murder mystery.

CHEEVER, JOHN. "Clancy in the Tower of Babel", ss in _The Enormous Radio_, Funk 1953, pbr Berkley 1958, (m).

+ CHRISTIAN, PAULA. _The Edge of Twilight._ pbo Crest 1959. Airline stewardess Val, in an alcoholic haze, allows herself to make love to a young girl friend, Toni. Fearing her own response to this "abnormal" love, she redoubles her promiscuous sleeping-around, but the girls end up together. The treatment, though sensational, is honest and constructive; the book will win no literary prizes, but whatever the reader's sympathies and prejudices, he will approve the stand that happy adjustment to love and affection--even homosexual--is a more constructive solution than promiscuity. Very good of its kind.

CHRISTIE, AGATHA. _A Murder is Announced._ Dodd, Mead 1950, fco. Suspects include a pair of problematical lesbians.

CLARK, DORENE. _The Exotic Affair._ Magnet Books, 1959, scv. "I really think this one should be Maggot Books," wrote my reviewer. "One of those fastmoving sloppy jobs where two men and two women on an exotic cruise complete with mis-spelled and misapplied foreign phrases spend most of their time trying all of the printable and some of the unprintable variations on an old old theme. All sex and no sentiment makes Jack and Jill sickening (and the reviewer sick) or, for that matter, Jack and Jack or Jill and Jill."

+ CLAYTON, JOHN. _Dew in April._ Kendall & Sharpe, 1935. Romance of the Middle Ages, laid in the Convent of St. Lazarus of the Butterflies. Dolores, a homeless vagabond, is given shelter by Mother Leonor, a mystic, repressed, white-hot and deeply tender woman whose passionate emotional attachments to her young novices are never explicit but pervade the entire book. Much of the story is concerned with a subtle, sweet and innocently sensual blossoming of adolescent emotions into homo-erotic form under the pressures of convent life; the interplay of delicate love relationships between Dolores, Mother Leonor, and the young novices Dezirada and Clarisse, and their fluctuation between despair, self-sacrifice and compassionate love when Dolores finds a knightly lover, Pedro, is probably unmatched in studies of feminine variance.

_Gold of Toulouse._ Kendall & Sharpe, 1935. Sequel to _Dew in April_, but laid chronologically six or seven years earlier. Though mostly concerned with the adventures of Don Marcos, the Spanish knight, it also tells the story of Leonor, and shows the beginning of her relationship with Dezirada.

CLIFTON, BUD. _Muscle Boy._ pbo Ace Books, 1958, (m). Teen-age athlete inveigled into posing for dirty pictures. Good evening waster.

COLE, JERRY. _Secrets of a Society Doctor._ Greenberg, 1935. pbr Universal Publishing & Distributing, ca. 1953, (m).

+ COLEMAN, LONNIE. _Ship's Company._ Little, Brown & Co, 1955, pbr Dell, 1957. Collection of short stories, of which two are homosexual.

_Sam._ David McKay, 1959, pbr Pyramid, 1960, (m). Major, excellent, important. Don't waste time reading reviews, just go out and buy it.

COLETTE, SIDONIE-GABRIELLE. _Claudine at School._ _Claudine in Paris._ _The Indulgent Husband_ (in The Short Novels of Colette). "Bella Vista" in _The Tender Shoot._ "Gitanette" in _Music Hall Sidelights._

All of these are currently in print in excellent, uniform English translation of the standard "Fleuron" edition of Colette's complete works, from Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, of recent date. The two "Claudine" novels have had recent Avon pbr editions under the titles of _Diary of a 15 Year Old French Girl_, and _Claudine_.

Much of the work of this important French novelist was variant. Only the most explicit are named above. The first three form a connected narrative, telling of Claudine's school crushes, her friendship with a male-homosexual cousin, and her "indulgent husband" who connives at her lesbian affair with a woman friend, in order to enjoy it secondhand. "Bella Vista" tells of a vacation spent at a hotel managed by two middle-aged lesbians; the narrator's fascinated interest in the couple vanishes when one of the "ladies" turns out to be, actually, a disguised man.

CONNOLLY, CYRIL. _The Rock Pool._ Scribner 1936, hcr New Directions n.d. Very well written novel of a group of expatriates in the South of France. Nearly all are homosexuals; the story is told without comment or judgment.

CONSTANTINE, MURRAY, and Margaret Goldsmith. _Venus in Scorpio._ John Lane, 1940. Heavily fictionalized biography, (erroneously listed elsewhere as a novel) of Marie Antoinette, suggesting lesbianism in her adolescence.

+ CORY, DONALD WEBSTER. _21 Variations on a Theme._ N. Y., Greenberg 1953. The classic anthology of short stories about homosexuals; four deal with feminine variance.

COUPEROUS, LOUIS. _The Comedians_, N. Y. Doran 1926. Variant couple in a novel of Imperial Rome.

COURAGE, JAMES. _A Way of Love._ G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1959, (m).

COWLIN, DOROTHY. _Winter Solstice._ Macmillan, 1943. A brief variant relationship proves beneficial to a hysterical invalid.

CRADOCK, PHYLLIS. _Gateway to Remembrance._ Andrew Dakers, London 1950. fco. Very brief mention of a lesbian couple in a sappy metaphysical novel about Lost Atlantis.

CRAIG, JONATHAN. _Case of the Village Tramp._ pbo Gold Medal 1959. Fast, well-written mystery introduces a pair of lesbians among the suspects; _good_ entertainment.

+ CRAIGIN, ELISABETH. _Either is Love._ Harcourt, Brace, 1937, pbr Lion Books, 1952, 1956, Pyramid 1960. After the death of her husband the narrator re-reads the letters she had written him about her intense love affair with another woman. Almost unequalled treatment of a lesbian _romance_.

CREAL, MARGARET. _A Lesson in Love._ Simon & Schuster 1957. A Canadian orphan's passion for a beautiful schoolmate ends in disillusion when the older girl, Tammy, tries to force Nicola into a distasteful affair with a boy, the better to deceive her mother about a similar affair of her own.

CROUZAT, HENRI. _The Island at the End of the World._ Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1959. An ex-schoolteacher, Patrice, is marooned on a sub-Antarctic island with three nurses; Joan, a nymphomanic; Victoria, a lesbian, and Kathleen, a quite ordinary girl. Due to fortuitous circumstances, they manage to assure themselves the necessities of life, and between Robinson-Crusoe-ish struggles, embark on a round of excesses gradually diminished by the horrible deaths of Kathleen, then Victoria. Fascinating, slightly macabre.

+ CUSHING, MARY WATKINS. _The Rainbow Bridge._ G P Putnam's Sons, 1954. This book is included for the light it sheds on another novel in this list, Marcia Davenport's _Of Lena Geyer_, and not for the sake of any impertinent conclusions about the real people involved. Mrs. Cushing served for seven years as companion and buffer against the world for the famous prima donna, Olive Fremstad, and Mme. Fremstad's reclusive, fantastically disciplined personality seems to have served, at least in part, as model for Lena Geyer. At any rate, both books become more interesting when read together.

DANE, CLEMENCE. (pseud. of Winifred Ashton); _Regiment of Women._ Macmillan, 1917. Possibly the earliest novel of variance. A lengthy book of the subtle sadism of the domineering headmistress of a girl's school.

DARIUS, MICHEL. _I, Sappho of Lesbos._ Castle Books, May 1960. Supposedly translated from a Medieval Latin manuscript conveniently lost on the Andrea Doria. In first-person, this weaves the better-known traditions about Sappho into a racy, fast-moving novel. The lesbian content is not emphasized, unduly. Writing-wise, this invites comparison with the work of Pierre Louys. The "scholarship" is completely tongue-in-cheekish, of course, as with the _Songs of Bilitis_. In general, this should prove the Title of the Year for those who wonder why they don't write like Pierre Louys anymore. (Department of Unpaid Advertising; this one can NOW be ordered through Winston Book Service; see Appendix.)

DAVENPORT, MARCIA. _Of Lena Geyer._ Scribner, 1936. Well-known novel of the life of an opera singer. Lena has a young satellite and adorer, but Elsie is careful to say that while "gossip has had many cruel things to say of this friendship ... there was, needless to say, not a word of truth in the essential accusation." The two women remain together, even after Lena's marriage, until her death.

DAVEY, WILLIAM. _Dawn Breaks the Heart._ Howell Soskin & Co, 1941. A lengthy episode involves the sensitive hero's elopement with Vivian, an irresponsible girl who turns out to be a lesbian and leaves him for another woman. Excellent.

DAVIES, RHYS. "Orestes", ss in _The Trip to London._ N. Y. Howell Soskin & Co, 1946. A lesbian manages to free the protagonist of a mother-complex, because her attitude is free of feminine seductiveness.

+ DAVIS, FITZROY. _Quicksilver._ Harcourt, Brace, 1942. Hilarious novel of the theatre, supposedly based on actual personalities recognizable to the initiate; my reviewer wrote that some theatrical people "literally turn purple at the mere mention of this book ... most real pro actors detest portrayal of homosexuality in theatre fiction, bad publicity and all that ... can't say I blame them much."

DAY, MAX. _So Nice, So Wild._ pbo, Stanley Library Inc, 1959. Evening waster; an impossibly complicated murder-story plot with a hero who, trying to prove he didn't murder his own uncle, is pestered by all sorts of girls crawling into his bunk, blondes, brunettes and a few lesbians trying hard to convert themselves to heterosexuality. Funny, real fun.

DEAN, RALPH. _One Kind of Woman._ pbo, Beacon, 1959. Evening waster.

_Forbidden Thrills._ pbo Bedtime Books 1959. Scv.

DEBUSSY, ROY.

--and Jay Arpage; _Non Stop Flight_, Brookwood 1958.

--and Cleo Dorene; _Fountain of Youth_, Brookwood 1958.

--and Arthur Maurier; _Wicked Curves_, Brookwood 1958.

--and Les Maxime; _Eye Lust_, Brookwood 1959.

--and Les Maxime; _The Golden Nymph_, Brookwood 1958.