The front runner
Item
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Title
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The front runner
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Description
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After the Stonewall Uprising, many mainstream publishers realised they could have commercial success with gay fiction. ‘The Front Runner’ was the first bestselling novel of this era, selling millions of copies when first published in 1974 by William Morrow. The story concerns Billy Sive, a young, gay athlete training for the 1976 Olympics, and his relationship with his older sports coach. Patricia Nell Warren (1936-2019), who was also an athlete, considered the novel’s publication to be a step in her own coming-out process. Latterly, Warren self-published lesbian fiction under the Wildcat Press imprint, fought online censorship laws and was one of the initial fifty nominees for the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor in New York City. The edition seized was probably the 1975 Bantam Books paperback rather than the one on display here.
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Rights
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All images within the Seized Books! Online exhibition are to be used exclusively for the promotion of the library and to facilitate research. If you download and subsequently share any images from the exhibition website, you agree it is your responsibility to ensure appropriate usage is upheld for that image. Commercial use or distribution of this content is not permitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. Copyright to content may be held by authors, artists, or their heirs, or may be in the public domain. Senate House Library does not automatically claim copyright on any images shown in the Seized Books! online exhibition.
