Recognizing Lesbian Pulp

As books at newsstands kiosks were organized by publisher imprint rather than by genre, it was not always an easy task to know which paperback novels featured lesbians.

Pulp fiction author Ann Bannon recalls buying lesbian pulp fiction in the 1950s:

"Given the off-putting covers, so clearly meant to serve as come-ons to a male readership, how did women identify these books? What was it like to walk into a drugstore, train station, a newsstand and see a lavishly endowed young sexpot primping on the cover of something called Women's Passions while she was ogled by another babe in a state of undress? In a word: awkward. Even scary. Because, despite all the care devoted to developing cover art that would activate male gonads, women learned to recognize what was a nascent literature of their own by reading the covers iconically."

Cover artists tapped into North American beliefs about homosexuality and readers seeking lesbian pulp fiction soon learned to recognize the cues.

Women

Pulp fiction covers often featured women, but the number of women, how they were portrayed on the cover, and how they related to each other provided essential information to the reader about whether or not there was lesbian content in the book.

The Golden Cage Front cover. A single nude woman, seemingly sitting over her bent knees, in profile, is looking away from the reader. She has her right arm raised, palm up and relaxed. Her left side is seen, almost centred in the space, beneath what appear to be tall grasses bordering a body of water, such as a lake. Her eyes are closed, her nose touching her raised arm. Her hair seems to be tied up in a bun behind her head. Her left arm is stretched downwards behind her. There are yellow lines and dots of many colours drawn next to the book title, which is in the right of the image. A double-exposure makes part of the image look faded. The scene is lit from the left.
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A Single woman

  • Is she nude or in provocative clothing?
  • Is her gaze away from the reader signifying her shame or desolation?
  • If she is looking out at the reader, does she look lonely or beseeching?

Browse the MSVU lesbian pulp fiction collection for covers that feature a single woman.

So Strange a Love front cover. The busts of two women take up most of the visual space. One of them, a redhead, is on the right of the image and in the foreground, in profile, facing left of the reader and looking toward the same direction. Her hair is up on a bun to the left of her head, and she looks forward with wide open, blue eyes, lips slightly parted. Her torso is naked, and she is wearing an earring. Beside her, on her right and facing the reader, stands a brunette, partially covered by the redhead. Her wavy, loose hair flips over her shoulders, and she is looking at the redhead with half-open eyes. Her torso, too, is naked. The background is purplish blue, and the scene is lit from the front-left.
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Two women

  • Do the women have different hair colour?
  • Are the women touching each other?
  • Is one woman looking at her partner, while the other looks in another direction?
  • Is there a lone male in the background looking embarrassed, hostile or sexually deprived?

Browse the MSVU lesbian pulp fiction collection for covers that feature two women.

Browse the MSVU lesbian pulp fiction collection for covers that feature two women and a man.

The Girls in 3-B front cover. Three women form a triangle inside what looks to be the bedroom of a city apartment. One, a blonde, stands in the background facing the reader, leaning against a wall beside a window. Her hair is shoulder-length and she is holding a cigarette in her right hand. Her right arm is fully extended downward and she grips it, with her right hand, at the elbow. She is wearing an orange jacket, unbuttoned, a brown skirt, and low heels stilettos. Her left leg is slightly bent, with the foot to her side, pointing out. She looks down to her left at another woman, a brunette with short hair, who sits on a bed with red and white undone sheets, putting on a stocking on her left leg. She sits in full profile, facing left of the image, and is wearing a black negligee and low heel stilettos on her right foot. The right leg shows a stocking at mid-thigh, and the left foot is bare. A third woman, also a brunette, stands with her back to the reader on the forefront left of the image. She wears a black slip and looks as if she is about to take off a blue blouse. Her hair is long and reaches the middle of her back, part of which is exposed. She too is looking at the brunette. There is a side table in the background, with a potted plant on top, and a pair of slippers on the ground. The scene is lit from the front right.
The Twisted Year front cover. On a black background, the body of a woman and three women's heads, floating in the space over a texture of purple are displayed. The full-bodied woman is a blonde who sits up, torso lifted and legs across a bed covered with a purple blanket. Her right leg is bent under the left one, which also bends slightly. Her body faces the reader, head towards the left of the image. She is supported on her right, extended arm to the side. Her other hand rests on the bed, in front of her. She is wearing a white, full-body slip and shoes that have crossed straps at the top of the foot. Her head is bowed, and her eyes look down, slightly towards her left. Above her on the left, three monochromatic, floating heads are seen in a vertical sequence. Two brunettes at top and bottom, and a blonde in the center., with a cigarette hanging from her lips. The brunette at the top looks straight at the reader. The blonde has short hair, and her head is slightly turned to her left, with a cigarette hanging from her lips. The brunette at the bottom has hair to her nape and looks straight on to the blonde on the bed. Hard light comes from the front left, illuminating mostly the blonde on the bed.

Three or more women

  • Are the women in a women’s only setting such as a dormitory, army barracks or prison?
  • Is at least one of the women nude or undressing?
  • Is there a suggestion of promiscuity?

Browse the MSVU lesbian pulp fiction collection for covers that feature three or more women.

Shadows and silhouettes

The Dark Side of Venus front cover. The silhouettes of two women's faces, one with short hair the other with long hair, occupy the bottom half of the space. The woman with short hair is in profile in the foreground, looking towards the right of the reader. The one with long hair is facing the reader and is in the background, to the left of the image, and seen from her chest up. Above them is a dark square background to the title and authors' names. The scene is lit from the back right.
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In her essay “Cover Charge: Selling Sex and Survival in Lesbian Pulp Fiction”, Melissa Sky comments on the use of shadows to suggest repression. This corresponds to the 1950s belief that female homosexuality was a mental illness involving sexual repression and inversion. On the cover of Ann Bannon’s “Women in the Shadows” (1959) the contrast between the silhouette and shadow with the photograph is emphasized by the text on the cover: “Their dark and troubled loves could flourish only in secret.”

The Mesh front cover. Woman with red hair is lying on a bed, looking out at the reader. Only her head, centred in the image, and her left arm, on which she rests her chin, are visible. She is superimposed over lighter images of multiple women, in a double-exposure fashion. The scene is lit in a monochromatic, diffused light.
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Ian Young notes that in the late 1960s as the many civil, women, and gay rights movements were underway, the silhouetted cover was replaced with the double exposure technique and lighter (including white) backgrounds. Homosexuality was emerging from the shadows into the light, yet still obscured.

Explore the use of shadows, both light and heavy, in the MSVU lesbian pulp fiction collection covers.

Code Words

If the book title contained certain words, it was considered “code” to indicate that the book’s characters were different from the norm.

Many titles also contained words with a negative moral tone such as corruption, damned, evil, sin, danger, etc.

The Strange Path front cover. Two women appear facing the reader, to the right of the image. One, a blonde with long, curly hair wearing a light-blue negligee, is sitting on a bed, legs folded under her body as she gazes at the reader with half-shut eyes and mouth slightly open. Her right-hand plays with a lock of her hair over her chest, the weight of her body on her stretched left arm. The left strap of her negligee hangs over her elbow. The other woman, a brunette with short hair, stands behind her, to the right of the image and facing the reader at a three-quarter angle towards the left. She is dressed in a blue cardigan and what seem to be black pants. Her head is upright, and her gaze is directed downward toward the blonde as she rests her right hand on the blonde's right shoulder. Her left fingers touch the blonde's left shoulder. On the wall behind them, the lights and shadows of window panes are cast, as well as their own shadows, and the light reflected seems like that of morning sunshine.
Of Love Forbidden front cover. A naked woman is sitting on the floor facing the viewer with arms and legs crossed, her chin resting on her right, bent knee. The background is a textured turquoise colour field, and the scene is lit from the top right in a hard light.

The use of coded terms was particularly conspicuous when books published before the pulp era where reprinted with new titles and covers.

  • “Torchlight to Valhalla” (1938) was reprinted as “The Strange Path” (1950)
  • “The Scorpion” (1932) was reprinted as “Of Love Forbidden” (1961)
http://ec.msvu.ca:8080/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10587/807/LPF-Illicit Interlude-Front.jpg

In a few exceptions, the clues to lesbian content appear in the cover text rather than in the cover illustration.

Despite the illustration of a seemingly heterosexual couple, the front cover text of Illicit Interlude reads: “She was a strange woman, one who could yield her flesh to a man – and wish he were a woman."

Sources

Sky, Melissa. “Cover Charge: Selling Sex and Survival in Lesbian Pulp Fiction” in Matthews, Nicole, and Moody, Nickianne. Judging a Book by its Cover: Fans, Publishers, Designers, and the Marketing of Fiction. Ashgate, 2007.

Young, Ian. Out in Paperback: A Visual History of Gay Pulps. LMB Editions, 2007.

Zimet, Jaye. Strange Sisters: The Art of Lesbian Pulp Fiction, 1949-1969. Viking Studio, 1999.

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Recognizing Lesbian Pulp