Definitions

Definition of Lesbian Pulp Fiction

Lesbian pulp fiction books share the following characteristics:

  • The book was published in a paperback format between the 1950s and the mid-1960s.

  • The book has clearly identified lesbian characters or subject matter (not simply in the subtext of the story).

  • The book cover consists of sensationalized cover art that allows readers to recognize them as lesbian pulp fiction.
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.

Reprints and Paperback Originals

Most of the lesbian pulp fiction titles were paperback originals, meaning they were written during the 1950s and 1960s and published as paperbacks. However, some publishers, usually the mainstream publishing houses, reprinted books that were first published in hardcover before the 1950s.

These books tended to portray lesbians in a positive (though heavily closeted) light, and when they were republished in the 1950s were repackaged with lurid covers and titles which promoted lesbianism as an illicit lifestyle. For example, Gale Wilhelm's 1938 Torchlight to Valhalla was reissued in paperback in 1950, renamed The Strange Path. Other publishers, perceiving Europeans as more sexually permissive, looked to England and France for titles to reprint in North America in paperback format. Shirley Verel's The Dark Side of Venus was published in hardcover in England in 1960 before it was released in paperback by Bantam Books in 1962.

For researchers interested in lesbian pulp fiction as a means of gleaning details of mainstream interpretations of white U.S. lesbian lifestyles in the mid-20th-century, the distinction between paperback originals and reprints is an important one. Not all scholars include the reprinted titles in their definition of lesbian pulp fiction. Although arguably better written with more sympathetic portrayals of lesbians than the paperback originals, researchers such as Martin Meeker and Tom Perrin reason that reprinted books are reflections of different time periods and different cultures, and therefore provide a different type of lesbian representation than the stories written for the mid-20th-century paperback market.

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.
The Corruption of Innocence front cover. A redhead is sitting on a black leather executive chair in the center of the image. Her hair is long and loose, and she has bangs above her eyebrows. She is sitting on her left leg, which folds fully under her body and towards her right. Her right leg is above it, folded in the same direction; the top of her bare foot can be seen facing the reader. She is is slightly leaned over, placing her weight on her extended left arm and her hand, which is supported on the seat of the chair. Her right arm is bent at the elbow and her palm faces her, to the side of her face and in her hair. She looks straight at the reader with her head tilted forward and to her right, her eyes open, and a smile on her lips. She is wearing a white brassiere whose left strap hangs over her elbow, and what appears to be a white slip pulled up to reveal her thighs, knees, and right calf. The seat looks to be close to the floor. There is light on her, coming from the left of the reader, and it is also seen reflected behind her. Everything else is dark and merging with a black background.

The paperback revolution broadened the number as well as the kinds of readers who might buy lesbian fiction. Despite the fact that many of the stories were male-oriented fiction with soft-core erotica as its intent, for the first time in history, lesbians and bisexual women living in isolation became aware that they might be part of larger sub-cultures.

For researchers interested in the development of lesbian identity in the 1950s and early 1960s, the wide distribution and heavy marketing of paperbacks is key to the definition of lesbian pulp fiction. Scholars such as Yvonne Keller, Christopher Nealon and Stephanie Foote, advocate for the inclusion of reprinted hardcover books in paperback format in the genre. They believe that the wide distribution and marketing of paperbacks is more important than the distinction between copyright dates and the literary differences between reprinted hardcover books and paperback originals.

Spanking Lesbian front cover. The cover has a white background with the text, and a smaller square in the center, depicting an image of two naked women, both brunettes. One of them stands to the right of the image holding a stick with her left hand. Her hair is straight and long and covers her bare chest. She is leaning over another woman who lies on her stomach, head away from the reader. Her buttocks are fully visible from the back, and the stick that the other woman holds is over and across them. The headboard of the bed is partially seen in front of her head, which is partially visible under her shoulder blades. The scene is lit from the front right, seemingly with artificial light.
Patience and Sarah front cover. On a black background and to the bottom right of the image, two women are partially in view. They are both naked. The one on the left is sitting down, her back to the reader at a three-quarter angle toward the left, in a fetal position, her head fully tucked between crossed arms that wrap around her knees. Of the second woman, only part of her torso, right arm and left breast can be seen. She faces the other woman and rests her right hand over her left elbow, arm over the shoulder. The scene is lit from the bottom left, as with a spotlight. Around the women, everything is wrapped in darkness.

There is agreement that the lesbian pulp fiction era came to a close after the mid-1960s. Increasingly relaxed censorship laws allowed for the emergence of pornography presses.  The rise of the women’s movement and events leading to the Stonewall riots and the LGBTQ+ rights movement eliminated the demand for the ‘male adventure’ genre produced by mainstream paperback publishers. The books published after 1965 reflect the changing politics of the late 1960s and 1970s with widening tensions between feminist themed books in the mainstream press and the more explicit sexual content of the pornography presses.

Browse the MSVU lesbian pulp fiction collection for covers from the different publishing periods and types of book publishing

Sources

Foote, Stephanie. "Deviant classics: Pulps and the making of lesbian print culture." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 31.1 (2005): 169-190.
Keller, Yvonne. "" Was It Right to Love Her Brother's Wife so Passionately?": Lesbian Pulp Novels and US Lesbian Identity, 1950-1965." American Quarterly 57.2 (2005): 385-410.
Meeker, Martin. "A Queer and Contested Medium: The Emergence of Representational Politics in the" Golden Age" of Lesbian Paperbacks, 1955-1963." Journal of Women's History 17.1 (2005): 165-188.
Nealon, Christopher. "Invert-history: The ambivalence of lesbian pulp fiction." New Literary History 31.4 (2000): 745-764.
Perrin, Tom. "Rebuilding Bildung: The Middlebrow Novel of Aesthetic Education in the Mid-Twentieth-Century United States." Novel: A Forum on Fiction. 44.3 (2011): 382-401.

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