Lambdas

• In 1952, Marijane Meaker, under the pseudonym Vin Packer, had the first pulp fiction hit with a purely lesbian plot.
• Enter the lesbian … The book’s cover reads:
  A story once told in whispers

  Now frankly, honestly written
  A story once told in whispers Now frankly, honestly written

Burning to tell

• Its novels “were intended as reliable, disposable entertainments: fast, short, and full of action”.
• She was recruited by Gold Medal editor-in-chief, Dick Carroll, to write Spring Fire, her first book.
• “What kind of story is a young girl like you burning to tell?” Carroll asked.
• She had wanted to attend one because
  I had heard homosexuality ran rampant in places like that.
• I wanted to find out if my suspicions were right, that I was one of those.

Queer New York life, with Patricia Highsmith

• Highsmith, best known for her Ripley novels, wrote one lesbian novel, The Price of Salt, under a pseudonym (Claire Morgan), also published in 1952.
• Meaker’s memoir, published after Highsmith’s death, gives a glimpse into queer life in 1950s New York.
• Read more:
  Friday essay: hidden in plain sight — Australian queer men and women before gay liberation

Lesbian pulp fiction and unhappy endings

• Pulp fiction did not appear in hardcover and was designed to be read quickly.
• As Ann Bannon, another writer enlisted by Meaker to write lesbian pulp noted, “You could read them on the bus and leave them on the seat.” Censorship had to be avoided.
• And the one she’s involved with is sick or crazy.” It set the tone for the denouement of much lesbian pulp fiction to come for at least the next decade.
• So the lesbian pulp fiction genre began.
• Lesbian fiction author Katherine V. Forrest describes her own first encounter with lesbian pulp at the age of 18:
  Overwhelming need led me to walk a gauntlet of fear up to the cash register.
• Perhaps the most enduring of lesbian pulp writers, Ann Bannon (pseudonym of Ann Weldy), managed to depict lesbian lovers who survived beyond the ending.

Spring Fire confirmed readers’ desires

• Spring Fire offers the pleasures of female same-sex activity, while ostensibly shutting down the possibility of lesbian life and love.
• She has a history of crushes on and obsessions with girls and women.
• Nevertheless, countless women read Spring Fire as confirmation of their own desires, taking it into over 15 printings.
• Read more:
  Fifty shades of erotica: how sex in literature went mainstream

Speaking in a double voice

• Lesbian pulp speaks in a double voice.
• Same-sex attracted women could see their own desires reflected, while the plot’s ultimate condemnation of lesbianism satisfied the censors and those concerned with public morality.
• Until Leda, there had been no one who had set her whole body pulsing with the sweet pain and the glory in the end.