Wilhelm, Gale

Wilhelm, Gale

26 April, 1908

Eugene, Oregon

11 July, 1991

Writer

Gale Wilhelm confined her literary output to the years between 1935 and 1945 when she published poems, short stories, and six novels, of which three were on lesbian themes. We Too are Drifting (1935) was reprinted as a paperback by Berkley in 1955, and recounts a doomed lesbian relationship in the tradition of Radclyffe Hall's Well of Loneliness (1928). Wilhelm's Torchlight to Valhalla (1938) was reprinted in paperback by Berkley in the 1950s under the title The Strange Path, and is a rare example of a lesbian novel from this early period which offers the possibility of happiness to the protagonists. As such it can be compared with Better Angel ( call no. PS 3503 R812 B48 2000), a similarly optimistic novel of love between two young men published in 1933 under the name Richard Meeker, the pseudonym of famed puppeteer Forman Brown (1901-1996).

Online Archive of Califonia, Finding Aid to the Gale Wilhelm Papers, 1926-1994,  http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt3h4nd3bv/

Terrence Paris