CHRISTIE, AGATHA. _A Murder is Announced._ Dodd, Mead 1950, fco.
Suspects include a pair of problematical lesbians.
CLARK, DORENE. _The Exotic Affair._ Magnet Books, 1959, scv. "I really think this one should be Maggot Books," wrote my reviewer.
"One of those fastmoving sloppy jobs where two men and two women on an exotic cruise complete with mis-spelled and misapplied foreign phrases spend most of their time trying all of the printable and some of the unprintable variations on an old old theme. All s.e.x and no sentiment makes Jack and Jill sickening (and the reviewer sick) or, for that matter, Jack and Jack or Jill and Jill."
+ CLAYTON, JOHN. _Dew in April._ Kendall & Sharpe, 1935. Romance of the Middle Ages, laid in the Convent of St. Lazarus of the b.u.t.terflies. Dolores, a homeless vagabond, is given shelter by Mother Leonor, a mystic, repressed, white-hot and deeply tender woman whose pa.s.sionate emotional attachments to her young novices are never explicit but pervade the entire book. Much of the story is concerned with a subtle, sweet and innocently sensual blossoming of adolescent emotions into h.o.m.o-erotic form under the pressures of convent life; the interplay of delicate love relationships between Dolores, Mother Leonor, and the young novices Dezirada and Clarisse, and their fluctuation between despair, self-sacrifice and compa.s.sionate love when Dolores finds a knightly lover, Pedro, is probably unmatched in studies of feminine variance.
_Gold of Toulouse._ Kendall & Sharpe, 1935. Sequel to _Dew in April_, but laid chronologically six or seven years earlier.
Though mostly concerned with the adventures of Don Marcos, the Spanish knight, it also tells the story of Leonor, and shows the beginning of her relationship with Dezirada.
CLIFTON, BUD. _Muscle Boy._ pbo Ace Books, 1958, (m). Teen-age athlete inveigled into posing for dirty pictures. Good evening waster.
COLE, JERRY. _Secrets of a Society Doctor._ Greenberg, 1935. pbr Universal Publishing & Distributing, ca. 1953, (m).
+ COLEMAN, LONNIE. _Ship"s Company._ Little, Brown & Co, 1955, pbr Dell, 1957. Collection of short stories, of which two are h.o.m.os.e.xual.
_Sam._ David McKay, 1959, pbr Pyramid, 1960, (m). Major, excellent, important. Don"t waste time reading reviews, just go out and buy it.
COLETTE, SIDONIE-GABRIELLE. _Claudine at School._ _Claudine in Paris._ _The Indulgent Husband_ (in The Short Novels of Colette).
"Bella Vista" in _The Tender Shoot._ "Gitanette" in _Music Hall Sidelights._
All of these are currently in print in excellent, uniform English translation of the standard "Fleuron" edition of Colette"s complete works, from Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, of recent date. The two "Claudine" novels have had recent Avon pbr editions under the t.i.tles of _Diary of a 15 Year Old French Girl_, and _Claudine_.
Much of the work of this important French novelist was variant.
Only the most explicit are named above. The first three form a connected narrative, telling of Claudine"s school crushes, her friendship with a male-h.o.m.os.e.xual cousin, and her "indulgent husband" who connives at her lesbian affair with a woman friend, in order to enjoy it secondhand. "Bella Vista" tells of a vacation spent at a hotel managed by two middle-aged lesbians; the narrator"s fascinated interest in the couple vanishes when one of the "ladies" turns out to be, actually, a disguised man.
CONNOLLY, CYRIL. _The Rock Pool._ Scribner 1936, hcr New Directions n.d. Very well written novel of a group of expatriates in the South of France. Nearly all are h.o.m.os.e.xuals; the story is told without comment or judgment.
CONSTANTINE, MURRAY, and Margaret Goldsmith. _Venus in Scorpio._ John Lane, 1940. Heavily fictionalized biography, (erroneously listed elsewhere as a novel) of Marie Antoinette, suggesting lesbianism in her adolescence.
+ CORY, DONALD WEBSTER. _21 Variations on a Theme._ N. Y., Greenberg 1953. The cla.s.sic anthology of short stories about h.o.m.os.e.xuals; four deal with feminine variance.
COUPEROUS, LOUIS. _The Comedians_, N. Y. Doran 1926. Variant couple in a novel of Imperial Rome.
COURAGE, JAMES. _A Way of Love._ G.P. Putnam"s Sons, 1959, (m).
COWLIN, DOROTHY. _Winter Solstice._ Macmillan, 1943. A brief variant relationship proves beneficial to a hysterical invalid.
CRADOCK, PHYLLIS. _Gateway to Remembrance._ Andrew Dakers, London 1950. fco. Very brief mention of a lesbian couple in a sappy metaphysical novel about Lost Atlantis.
CRAIG, JONATHAN. _Case of the Village Tramp._ pbo Gold Medal 1959.
Fast, well-written mystery introduces a pair of lesbians among the suspects; _good_ entertainment.
+ CRAIGIN, ELISABETH. _Either is Love._ Harcourt, Brace, 1937, pbr Lion Books, 1952, 1956, Pyramid 1960. After the death of her husband the narrator re-reads the letters she had written him about her intense love affair with another woman. Almost unequalled treatment of a lesbian _romance_.
CREAL, MARGARET. _A Lesson in Love._ Simon & Schuster 1957. A Canadian orphan"s pa.s.sion for a beautiful schoolmate ends in disillusion when the older girl, Tammy, tries to force Nicola into a distasteful affair with a boy, the better to deceive her mother about a similar affair of her own.
CROUZAT, HENRI. _The Island at the End of the World._ Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1959. An ex-schoolteacher, Patrice, is marooned on a sub-Antarctic island with three nurses; Joan, a nymphomanic; Victoria, a lesbian, and Kathleen, a quite ordinary girl. Due to fortuitous circ.u.mstances, they manage to a.s.sure themselves the necessities of life, and between Robinson-Crusoe-ish struggles, embark on a round of excesses gradually diminished by the horrible deaths of Kathleen, then Victoria. Fascinating, slightly macabre.
+ CUSHING, MARY WATKINS. _The Rainbow Bridge._ G P Putnam"s Sons, 1954. This book is included for the light it sheds on another novel in this list, Marcia Davenport"s _Of Lena Geyer_, and not for the sake of any impertinent conclusions about the real people involved. Mrs. Cushing served for seven years as companion and buffer against the world for the famous prima donna, Olive Fremstad, and Mme. Fremstad"s reclusive, fantastically disciplined personality seems to have served, at least in part, as model for Lena Geyer. At any rate, both books become more interesting when read together.
DANE, CLEMENCE. (pseud. of Winifred Ashton); _Regiment of Women._ Macmillan, 1917. Possibly the earliest novel of variance. A lengthy book of the subtle sadism of the domineering headmistress of a girl"s school.
DARIUS, MICHEL. _I, Sappho of Lesbos._ Castle Books, May 1960.
Supposedly translated from a Medieval Latin ma.n.u.script conveniently lost on the Andrea Doria. In first-person, this weaves the better-known traditions about Sappho into a racy, fast-moving novel. The lesbian content is not emphasized, unduly.
Writing-wise, this invites comparison with the work of Pierre Louys. The "scholarship" is completely tongue-in-cheekish, of course, as with the _Songs of Bilitis_. In general, this should prove the t.i.tle of the Year for those who wonder why they don"t write like Pierre Louys anymore. (Department of Unpaid Advertising; this one can NOW be ordered through Winston Book Service; see Appendix.)
DAVENPORT, MARCIA. _Of Lena Geyer._ Scribner, 1936. Well-known novel of the life of an opera singer. Lena has a young satellite and adorer, but Elsie is careful to say that while "gossip has had many cruel things to say of this friendship ... there was, needless to say, not a word of truth in the essential accusation."
The two women remain together, even after Lena"s marriage, until her death.
DAVEY, WILLIAM. _Dawn Breaks the Heart._ Howell Soskin & Co, 1941.
A lengthy episode involves the sensitive hero"s elopement with Vivian, an irresponsible girl who turns out to be a lesbian and leaves him for another woman. Excellent.
DAVIES, RHYS. "Orestes", ss in _The Trip to London._ N. Y. Howell Soskin & Co, 1946. A lesbian manages to free the protagonist of a mother-complex, because her att.i.tude is free of feminine seductiveness.
+ DAVIS, FITZROY. _Quicksilver._ Harcourt, Brace, 1942. Hilarious novel of the theatre, supposedly based on actual personalities recognizable to the initiate; my reviewer wrote that some theatrical people "literally turn purple at the mere mention of this book ... most real pro actors detest portrayal of h.o.m.os.e.xuality in theatre fiction, bad publicity and all that ...
can"t say I blame them much."
DAY, MAX. _So Nice, So Wild._ pbo, Stanley Library Inc, 1959.
Evening waster; an impossibly complicated murder-story plot with a hero who, trying to prove he didn"t murder his own uncle, is pestered by all sorts of girls crawling into his bunk, blondes, brunettes and a few lesbians trying hard to convert themselves to heteros.e.xuality. Funny, real fun.
DEAN, RALPH. _One Kind of Woman._ pbo, Beacon, 1959. Evening waster.
_Forbidden Thrills._ pbo Bedtime Books 1959. Scv.
DEBUSSY, ROY.
-and Jay Arpage; _Non Stop Flight_, Brookwood 1958.
-and Cleo Dorene; _Fountain of Youth_, Brookwood 1958.
-and Arthur Maurier; _Wicked Curves_, Brookwood 1958.
-and Les Maxime; _Eye l.u.s.t_, Brookwood 1959.
-and Les Maxime; _The Golden Nymph_, Brookwood 1958.
These are all hardcover risque novels retailing for about $3 in bookstores which deal in that sort of thing for the adult trade only; I don"t know, not being a postal inspector, whether they can legally be sent through the U S Mails. On the whole I would think not. They are all fairly well written for books of their kind, amusing and entertaining, and bear about the same relationship to the paperback scv-evening wasters that ESQUIRE does to the average cheaper girly magazine. They are, however, strictly for a male audience; the "lesbian" content in all of them is presented from a strip-tease point of view and in every case the girl involved is "cured" of this perversion by male seduction-in some cases, by brutality. The plot of _Non Stop Flight_ is typical; hero Eric Leighton discovers his wife dallying with a lesbian, so he beats up and rapes the lesbian (juicily described) whereupon his wife commits suicide. Then Eric gets involved with Celia, a stereotype "dish" with an ineffectual husband; when Celia tires of him he beats her up and rapes her (juicily described) then runs across the lesbian who has seduced his wife _and_ Celia, so he beats her up and rapes her again (juicily described) after which Eric and the lesbian get married and live very happily forever after. I don"t know precisely what to call these books, but lesbiana is hardly descriptive. You have been warned.
DEISS, JAY. _The Blue Chips._ Simon & Schuster 1957, pbr Bantam 1958. fco. In an excellent novel of medical laboratory workers, a very very minor lesbian character.
DE FORREST, MICHAEL. _The Gay Year._ N. Y., Woodford Press, 1949, (m). Happily untypical of this publisher"s racy trash, this story of a young man searching for self-knowledge in New York"s Bohemia is very good of its kind.
DELL, FLOYD. _Diana Stair._ Farrar & Rinehart, 1932. Long novel of the early 19th century. Diana is a woman writer, but also explores life as mill-girl, schoolteacher and abolitionist. Though attracted to, and attractive to men, she is never without "some older woman to adore and emulate, or some younger woman to teach and inspire." Delightful, ironic novel of the trouble women can get into when they refuse to fall neatly into the ruts laid down by conventional society for women"s lives.
DE MEJO, OSCAR. _Diary of a Nun._ pbo Pyramid 1955. Just what it sounds like-fictional diary of a young girl in a convent warding off scandalous advances. Mediocre.
+ DENNIS, NIGEL FORBES. _Cards of Ident.i.ty._ Vanguard, 1955.