Third street (The)

Third street (The)

A paperback original. This book was published as a mass-market paperback without a hardcover printing.

156 pages

18 cm

Pat and Karen meet when Karen models for Pat, an artist.

An excerpt was reprinted in Forrest, Katherine V. Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Sexually Intrepid World of Lesbian Paperback Novels 1950-1965. San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2005.

Tooth Murphy, Amy. "The Kitchen: Lesbian Pulp Fiction's Radical Conventionalism." Queering the Interior, edited by M. Cook & A. Gorman-Murray, Home, Bloomsbury, 2018, pp. 51-63

"As the book ends it leaves four main characters known sex perverts successful in business and seemingly happy with no indication that there is anything reprehensible in that way of life."

Contested in the U.S.A and Canada by the National Organization for Decent Literature. It was listed in the NODL Newsletter from 7-21-1964 until August 1965.

Appears in the 1964 Register of Prohibited Publications issued by the Irish Censorship Board.

The street where no questions were asked.
The street where few men were ever seen.

Gay street.
This was the street where they came ... the lonely and the love-starved, the lovely and the promiscuous, seeking new thrills, searching for a partner ... a special kind of partner
This was where they met ... the tormented female artist and the amoral young model, bearing their secret needs and feeding their secret hungers ... needs and hungers condemned by society.
They walked together into a world of exotic evil.

The cover shows a night scene, outdoors in a city or town street. Two women, their backs to the reader, walk holding hands. The one on the left is a blonde with hair flipped outwards at her shoulders. She is wearing a yellow, sleeveless dress with an adjusted waist, and black, high heels. She carries a clutch-type black handbag in her left hand and her head is turned sharply to her right, looking straight out at the other woman, a brunette with short hair who is wearing a black blouse with long sleeves, brown pants tapered at the ankles, and black low heels. Her right arm is extended downwards. The street looks wet and there are buildings, some neon signs and a lamp post in the background. The scene is lit from the top right.