LibGuides: Lesbian & Gay Pulp Fiction: Secondary Sources

Secondary Sources

Book cover for Queer Pulp by Susan Stryker with image of 2 white women wearing white underwear, posing suggestively

For an introduction to the historical context and critical interpretation of queer pulp fiction, you may wish to consult these secondary sources, available in Perkins Library:

Roger Austen. Playing the Game: The Homosexual Novel in America Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1977.
Susanna Benns. "Sappho in Soft Cover: Notes on Lesbian Pulp." In Fireworks: The Best of Fireweed. Ed. Makeda Silvera. Toronto: Women's Press, 1986.
Michael Bronski. Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2003.
J. D'Emilio. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Jeannette H. Foster. Sex Variant Women in Literature: A History and Quantitative Survey. Tallahassee: Naiad Press, 1985.
Barbara Grier. Lesbian in Literature. Tallahassee: Naiad Press, 1981. Features many photos of lesbian authors from every era.
Drewey Gunn. The Gay Male Sleuth in Print and Film: a History and Annotated Bibliography. Lanham, Md. : Scarecrow Press, 2013.
Diane Hamer. "'I Am a Woman': Ann Bannon and the Writing of Lesbian Identity in the 1950s." Lesbian and Gay Writing: An Anthology of Critical Essays. Ed. Mark Lilly. Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1990.
John Howard. Men Like That: A Southern Queer History University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Joan Nestle. "Butch-Femme Relationships: Sexual Courage in the 1950s." In Nestle's A Restricted Country. Ithaca: Firebrand Books, c1987.
Jean Radford. "An Inverted Romance: The Well of Loneliness and Sexual Ideology." In Radford's (ed) The Progress of Romance: The Politics of Popular Fiction. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.
Lou Rand. The Gay Detective. Fresno, Calif. : Saber Books, c1961.
Lee Server. Over My Dead Body: The Sensational Age of the American Paperback, 1945-1955. San Francisco : Chronicle Books, 1994.
Anthony Slide. Lost Gay Novels: A Reference Guide to Fifty Works from the First Half of the Twentieth Century . Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press, 2003.
Susan Stryker. Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001.
Jeff Weinstein, "In Praise of Pulp: Bannon's Lusty Lesbians," Voice Literary Supplement, no. 20 (Oct. 1983), pp. 8-9. (Microfilm)
Roberta Yusba. "Odd Girls and Strange Sisters. Lesbian Pulp Novels of the '50s," Out/Look, Spring 1991, pp. 34-37.
Jaye Zimet. Strange Sisters. The Art of Lesbian Pulp Fiction, 1949-1969. New York: Viking Studio, 1999.

Early Lesbian Novels

Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (1928) is considered the classic lesbian novel and a precursor to the pulps. Two of Gale Wilhelm's novels, Torchlight to Valhalla and We Too Are Drifting, are considered classics of lesbian literature.

Early (non-pulp) novels with appreciable lesbian content include: