Many people dismiss pulp fiction as cheap, trashy paperbacks that lower-class people read in lieu of literary classics. Yet because they could be produced and distributed so quickly and inexpensively, these stories were able to respond with immediacy to the great changes in society that followed World War II. Sandwiched between the Kinsey reports on male and female sexual behavior (1948 and 1953) and landmark censorship trials and the 1969 Stonewall rebellion, the characters and narratives of lesbian and gay pulp fiction reflected a more open attitude toward sexual identities and relationships but also the harsh reality during the McCarthy era of the lavender scare and the moral panics about homosexuality that were used to justify firing homosexuals from government positions. Pulp fiction that features LGBTQ+ characters as the primary protagonists was a genre roughly from 1945 to 1970. These books were usually printed under a pseudonym, and scholars and archivists have been uncovering the real authors, many of whom identify as gay or lesbian. Further, printing houses with LGBTQ+ owners or sponsors enabled the widespread dissemination of these popular stories. Much pulp fiction from the 1950s and 1960s was reprinted starting in the 1980s by, for example, Naiad Press, Cleis Press, and Argo Press.
Historical Context for Pulp Fiction
The antecedents for pulp fiction go back to the nineteenth century, when the rise of industrialization led to both more economical printing processes and more spare time for reading among the middle and working classes. The penny press was tabloid-style newspapers that included fiction along with news, and because these were so cheaply printed, readers thought nothing of discarding them with the trash.
This early popular literature was quite melodramatic and highly moralistic, but that quality evolved into the more sensational fiction that featured sex, sexual crime including rape and incest, crime more generally, family secrets, squalor, and clear-cut differences between good and evil. One early type of this popular fiction, the city mystery, brought together characters from all classes, races, and genders through convoluted plots that focused on the decadence of the upper class and the vile nature of the lower.
Other genres included westerns (such as the Deadwood Dick series; figure 11.16), horror (derived from the earlier Gothic genre), and crime and police stories. Although none of this literature can be identified as LGBTQ+, it had important features that shaped the queer pulp of the twentieth century. One such feature was the garish covers that quickly identified the type of story they contained.
Figure 11.16. An issue from the Deadwood Dick series. (Public domain, Edward T. LeBlanc Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, Northern Illinois University.)
Another important characteristic, found particularly in the city mystery, was the manner in which these narratives identified specific urban spaces where certain communities of people might congregate. Almost every city mystery features secret passages, hidden doors, and shadowed alleys—all suggesting the dark underworld where social mores could be transgressed. (It is no wonder that twilight becomes such a catchword in queer pulp.) One of the best contributions of lesbian and gay pulp fiction was to help LGBTQ+ people see that they could be a part of their city and that there were spaces that would welcome them.
Again, although there were no LGBTQ+ characters in early pulp, there were gay subtexts that highlight effete men who wear suffocating perfumes and too much hair oil and voracious women who threaten young virgins. Much popular fiction of the nineteenth century provided the vocabulary and stereotypical characters for later reading audiences concerning individuals who fail to conform to proper social and sexual guidelines.
Pulp Fiction in the Twentieth Century
The 1920s and 1930s saw the continuing publication of popular stories in magazine format, and these mass-marketed magazines began to specialize in specific sorts of stories: crime, passion, adventure, romance, and science fiction. These stories continued to feature garish covers and sensational language (figure 11.17). Then, in 1939, Simon and Schuster Publishers established a new division, Pocket Books, which was modeled after Penguin Books in England. With the introduction of a much cheaper form of paper production based on wood pulp (hence the genre’s name), Pocket Books was able to sell these new paperbacks for twenty-five cents. At first, Pocket Books reprinted literary classics in this new format, which shared characteristics of the earlier magazines. Every author from Shakespeare to William Faulkner could be pulped into a cheaper edition, and lurid cover art and text were part of the process.
By the advent of World War II, pulp fiction magazines were popular and profitable—but they were also considered second-rate literature. With wartime paper shortages, magazines soon died out, but publishers made good use of digest and magazine presses to produce Armed Services Editions from 1943 to 1947. These small fiction and nonfiction paperbacks were issued to members of the military and introduced new generations of readers to entertaining and distracting stories printed in a portable format.
Figure 11.17. An example of an early twentieth-century mass-marketed magazine. (CC-BY Will Hart.)
Postwar publishing houses responded to these new readers with an explosion of cheap paperbacks. Fawcett’s Gold Medal Books, established in 1950, was the first to publish original writing in this format, typically five by seven inches, with a glued spine, garish cover art, and cheap, rough paper that quickly turned yellow and disintegrated.
Lesbian Pulp Fiction
In 1950, Gold Medal Books printed the first lesbian pulp novel: Women’s Barracks by Tereska Torrès. This novel is a largely autobiographical account of the time that the author spent in London at a military barracks for women serving in the Free French Forces. Torrès herself narrates, relating the day-to-day life for a group of five French women, who differ in age and in experience and who couple and partner in various ways. One of the first scenes of the story occurs when the women have stripped naked for their medical evaluation; much focus is put on the individual female bodies, both naked and clothed. And one of the characters, of course, commits suicide.[62]
Appearing soon after Women’s Barracks were Vin Packer’s Spring Fire(1952), considered the first lesbian pulp fiction by a lesbian author, and Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt(1952), written under the name Claire Morgan.The Price of Salt was unusual for its time, in that the two protagonists remain together at the end of the story; at the end of Spring Fire, one woman is confined to a mental hospital because of her unfortunate alliances.[63]
Lesbian pulps were not the first appearance of lesbian women in literature. Earlier in the century, Radclyffe Hall wrote The Well of Loneliness(1928) with the “inverted” character Stephen Gordon. Djuna Barnes published Night Watchin 1936 with the help of a literary agent, and Gale Wilhelm published We Too Are Driftingin 1935 with Random House. Although these early works are now considered classics of lesbian literature, even Radclyffe Hall could be pulped and reissued in the 1950s (figure 11.18).[64]
Although the earlier lesbian pulp fiction, such as Women’s Barracks and Spring Fire, ended tragically in suicide or insanity, a handful of lesbian authors contributed a great deal to the increasing level of self-acceptance among their readers, due to their complex characterizations and positive plot resolutions. Across the nation, lesbians read pulp fiction and learned that they were not alone, and lesbian pulps did much to help these readers establish their own communities.Ann Bannon, whom many consider the queen of lesbian pulps, wrote five books in the Beebo Brinker series (1957–1962) (figure 11.19). Her characters range from the mannish Beebo to more femme characters, demonstrating how far pulps could move from the stereotypical people who transgressed social and sexual norms.[65]
Other productive writers included Valerie Taylor, author of The Girls in 3-B(1959) and Stranger on Lesbos (1960); Marijane Meaker, who wrote, as Vin Packer, Spring Fire and, as Anne Aldrich, We, Too, Must Love(1958); and March Hastings, who wrote Three Women(1958). These authors elevated lesbian pulp with well-crafted stories and multifaceted characters. And there were hundreds more authors, many of whom remain anonymous, who are just now being identified and reprinted by such publishers as Naiad Press and Cleis Press, which have focused on lost lesbian literature.[66]
Figure 11.18. Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. (Deborah Amory.)
Figure 11.19. A Beebo Brinker book by Ann Bannon. (Deborah Amory.)
Lesbian pulps, much like dime novels and city mysteries in the previous century, were easy to spot by their covers. And, like the earlier sensational fiction, these pulps were disseminated through drug stores, train stations, and other public spaces. This accessibility dovetailed with the increase in same-sex communities, whether in women’s military organizations or women working together in industry in greater numbers, and with the postwar relocation of many young women to large urban centers with gathering spots, such as gay bars.Pulps gave these women a language, a map, and a conduct code and contributed to the formation of some of the earliest lesbian civil rights groups, such as the Daughters of Bilitis, organized in 1955.
Gay Pulp Fiction
Just as with lesbian fiction, there were gay literary works in the first half of the twentieth century. Books such as Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote (1948) and The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal (1948) were notable in that they avoided the tragic plot in which the gay protagonist dies or kills himself or goes insane. However, an early gay pulp, written by Charles Jackson, The Fall of Valor (1946), is a tragic story that mirrors the unhappy life of the author (also the author of The Lost Weekend).[67]
Gay pulp fiction in the 1950s frequently partnered a boy’s coming-of-age story with a narrative of coming out. Two good examples of this story line are Gerald Tesch’s Never the Same Again(1956) and Russell Thacher’s The Tender Age(1952), both of which have protagonists who are dealing with the unsettled society of postwar America.[68]
The gay pulps that emerged in the 1960s often took two different approaches. In one, the gay protagonist finds self-awareness and acceptance within his new community; the second approach takes a much more campy tone. Typical of the first type are the novels of Richard Amory, which include Song of the Loon (1966), a gay pastoral with gay Native Americans, and its two sequels, Song of Aaron (1967) and Listen, the Loon Sings(1968)—all issued by Greenleaf Publishers, a gay printing house based in Chicago and then San Diego.[69]
The more campy pulps were responding to the glut of spy movies and television shows of the 1960s. One of the most popular titles was The Man from C.A.M.P. (1966) by Don Holliday, a pseudonym for Victor J. Banis. Holliday’s ten C.A.M.P. pulps starred Jackie Holmes, a highly accomplished agent for C.A.M.P., an organization dedicated to the protection of gays (figure 11.20). Other campy pulps took similar liberties with other popular genre fiction. Again, Greenleaf Publishers issued many of these books.[70]
Figure 11.20. The second and eighth of Don Holliday’s ten C.A.M.P. pulps. (Deborah Amory.)
Tropes and Themes
Lesbian and gay pulp fiction stories tend to use the same settings: all-boys or all-girls schools, college fraternities or sororities, military organizations, department stores, art studios, and the like.
Publishers demanded formulaic plots that could be turned out quickly: in lesbian pulp, the formula tended to be that the female protagonist was either saved from homosexuality by the love of a good man or died. Marion Zimmer Bradley, author of several lesbian pulps, completely quit writing in the genre, because publishers would not let her tell the story she wanted to.[71] In gay pulp, standard story lines often involved a boy’s first sexual experience as either enlightening or devastating. Again, a common story line was boy meets boy; boy dies.
Although the majority of LGBTQ+ pulp fiction presented this punitive aspect to unconventional sexual relationships, a good portion actually have happy endings, in which main characters emerge with a positive attitude about their sexual identity.
LGBTQ+ pulp fiction offered a window into the gay and lesbian world. Readers might learn where gays lived (typically Greenwich Village or perhaps New Orleans), how they congregated at gay bars and bathhouses, and other details. These stories were essentially a map to gay life, providing directions to positive urban spaces.
In many LGBTQ+ pulps, the narrative shows the protagonist being introduced to codes of dress and language (lesbians have short hair and wear white shirts with black stovepipe pants). They gave their readers a vocabulary, or code, with which to redefine and identify themselves, much like an etiquette manual or foreign phrase book.
How much sex is actually in these stories? Not that much. And the sex might be consensual and pleasurable, but it could also be nonconsensual, violent, and exploitative. Blackmail often entered the plot.
Introduction to the Lesbian Pulp Fiction Collection at the Mount Saint Vincent University Library
“Introduction to the Lesbian Pulp Fiction Collection at the Mount Saint Vincent University Library” describes the library’s collection (msvulpf.omeka.net/exhibits/show/lpf/lpf).
Did any of the facts about pulp fiction discussed in this section or the video surprise or intrigue you? Discuss what surprised or intrigued you and why.
Explore the books listed under one of the collection’s identified themes(opens in new window). What evidence do you find that the books belong with this theme? How does this theme compare to the tropes and themes discussed in this section?
This section and the introduction to the collection both note that gay and lesbian pulp fiction in the 1950s both enforced heteronormative and homophobic societal norms and provided an opportunity for lesbians and gays to see themselves in fiction and learn about lesbian and gay culture. Read one of the books mentioned in this chapter, and describe how it might have been able to do both of these things.
Pulp Fiction after Stonewall
The 1960s saw landmark trials that revoked censorship codes and the rise of the gay rights movement after the Stonewall rebellion. By the 1970s, LGBTQ+ pulp fiction began to evolve in several directions—erotica, romance, and mainstream gay and lesbian literature by such authors as Sarah Waters, Dorothy Allison, Jeannette Winterson, Alison Bechdel, Alan Hollinghurst, Armistead Maupin, and Michael Cunningham. There continues to be much new research into these books, authors, publishers, and cover artists, and major library collections can now be found at Brown University (perhaps the largest collection of LGBTQ+ pulp fiction anywhere) and at Duke University.
Check Your Knowledge
Contributed by Has Arakelyan, Rio Hondo College
Multiple-Choice Questions
1. What was a significant reason lesbian and gay pulp fiction flourished between 1945 and 1970?
A) It was always published by major literary houses.
B) It was required reading in schools.
C) Cheap production and distribution allowed rapid response to social changes.
D) It was only available in hardcover editions.
2. Which 1950 novel is considered the first lesbian pulp fiction and is largely autobiographical?
A) The Well of Loneliness
B) Women’s Barracks
C) Spring Fire
D) The Price of Salt
3. What was a common formulaic plot demanded by publishers in lesbian pulp fiction?
A) The story ends with a wedding
B) The protagonist becomes a famous author
C) The female protagonist is either “saved” by a man or dies
D) The protagonist travels the world
4. How did pulp fiction contribute to the formation of early lesbian civil rights groups?
A) By providing etiquette manuals
B) By avoiding controversial topics
C) By focusing only on heterosexual relationships
D) By mapping urban spaces and offering codes of dress and language
5. Which of the following is true about the representation of sex in lesbian and gay pulp fiction?
A) Sex scenes were rare and could be consensual, nonconsensual, or exploitative.
B) It was always explicit and consensual.
C) Sex was never mentioned.
D) Kissing was rare.
In what ways did lesbian and gay pulp fiction both reinforce and challenge heteronormative and homophobic societal norms of its time?
How did the accessibility and visibility of pulp fiction impact the development of LGBTQ+ communities and identities in the mid-20th century?
Discuss the significance of urban settings and coded language in pulp fiction for readers seeking community and self-understanding.
How did the evolution of pulp fiction after Stonewall reflect broader changes in LGBTQ+ rights, literature, and culture?
What are the lasting legacies of lesbian and gay pulp fiction for contemporary LGBTQ+ literature and representation?
Multiple-Choice Questions - Answers
1. C) Cheap production and distribution allowed rapid response to social changes.
2. B) Women’s Barracks
3. C) The female protagonist is either “saved” by a man or dies
4. D) By mapping urban spaces and offering codes of dress and language
5. A) Sex scenes were rare and could be consensual, nonconsensual, or exploitative.
