Items

• Gaywyck
  ‘Gaywyck’ was the first novel by New York writer and photo editor Vincent Virga (1942-). The first edition of the book, the one seized during ‘Operation Tiger’, was published in 1980 by Avon and advertised with a quote from ‘New York Magazine’ stating it was the “first gay gothic” novel. As a fan of gothic romance – the title is a play on Anya Seton’s 1944 gothic novel, ‘Dragonwyck’ – Virga wrote the novel with gay characters “to show that genres know no gender”. Set in the nineteenth century at Gaywyck, a Long Island estate owned by the Gaylord family, the story follows Robert Whyte, who is employed to catalogue the library, and his relationship with Donaugh Gaylord. Dark family secrets are revealed, but the story ends happily for the couple. Virga’s second book, ‘A Comfortable Corner’, was also seized during ‘Operation Tiger’.
• One for the gods : a novel
  The second book in the Peter and Charlie trilogy by Gordon Merrick (1916-1988) and the couple, now a decade into their relationship, move from the South of France to Greece. The copy on display is the original Bernard Geis Associates edition from 1971. The cover design, by Roy E. LaGrone, is of a sculpted Greek head rendered in black ink against a red background, overlaid with large, sans-serif white lettering. It lends the book a serious air – this could be a historical novel or a textbook – at odds both with its content and with the smouldering pulp covers of later Merrick editions, as published by Avon Books. Bernard Geis was also responsible for Jacqueline Susann’s ‘The Valley of the Dolls’ in 1966, one of the bestselling novels in publishing history.
• The New York diary of Ned Rorem
  The ‘New York Diary’ begins with Ned Rorem (1923-2022) returning home from Paris and is the second volume of Rorem’s diaries, covering the period 1955-1961. As with the previous volume, Rorem uses the diary form to discuss the – often famous – people he meets, his thoughts on the life of an artist and his own personal life, including his relationships and alcoholism. Rorem noted that these New York diaries were “less frivolous and more outspoken” than those he wrote in Paris. The exhibition shows Rorem’s diaries in two separate volumes, although in the list of books seized from Gay’s the Word they are listed as one title. It is likely, therefore, that the combined edition published by US paperback imprint Avon was the one seized.
• Women and madness
  Since publication in 1972, this feminist work on women’s psychology has sold over 2.5 million copies. Psychologist Phyllis Chesler (1940-) interviewed women who had been psychiatry or psychotherapy patients and wove their experiences into a book which explores the ways in which women are stigmatised, abused and oppressed by a patriarchal medical establishment. The book is held in multiple UK academic libraries. It is unclear which edition of the book was seized during ‘Operation Tiger’ – the Allen Lane edition is shown here – but more likely it was the 1973 version from the US mass market publisher Avon Books. Chesler sued the owners of Avon for publishing the book with differences from her original text.