Spring Fire | Jotup

Royal romances have always been fantasies of transformation. How does new-generation teen fiction reflect queer and diverse desires?

Retrieved on:

Friday, August 11, 2023

The queer injection into the young adult royal romance reflects a broader shift in what’s being published and read.

Key Points:

The queer injection into the young adult royal romance reflects a broader shift in what’s being published and read.
Last year, research showed LGBTQ fiction sales in the US jumped 39% from the same period in the previous year.
And young adult fiction grew in particular, with 1.3 million more books sold than the previous year.
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It’s been more than 20 years since Anne Hathaway graced our screens in the film adaptation of Meg Cabot’s young adult royal romance The Princess Diaries (2001).
Other familiar tropes of the royal romance include the “surprise reveal”, where one half of a couple’s royal identity is uncovered, like in Netflix’s The Princess Switch.

Released in 2019, Casey McQuiston’s book quickly went viral, becoming an instant New York Times bestseller, winning awards and making best books lists.
The classic “enemies-to-lovers” romance trope takes on international significance with the offspring of two world leaders involved.
Alex and Henry’s initial dislike for each other boils over and catches media attention after they ruin the cake at a royal wedding.
Read more:
Spring Fire, the first lesbian pulp fiction hit, satisfied censors with its unhappy ending – but its 'forbidden love' reflected real desires

Other popular young adult royal romances explore queer relationships, too.
Her Royal Highness, by Rachel Hawkins, is set in a university in Scotland, where American Millie discovers her roommate Flora is a Scottish princess.
Her Royal Highness is a companion story to Hawkins’ first (heteronormative) royal romance novel, Prince Charming (originally titled “Royals”).
Other young adult royal romances have maintained the focus on boy-girl couples, but engaged with contemporary audiences in other ways, by exploring concerns around class, wealth and gendered expectations.

Retrieved on:

Sunday, May 14, 2023

In 1952, Marijane Meaker, under the pseudonym Vin Packer, had the first pulp fiction hit with a purely lesbian plot.

Key Points:

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

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.

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.
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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 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.
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Fifty shades of erotica: how sex in literature went mainstream

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.