Items

• Coming out
  This novel tells the story of middle-aged divorcee Roger Thornton, and his new life as an out gay man residing in New York, in a relationship with the younger and more extrovert Michael. In addition to this central relationship, the novel features characters from the wider LGBT community including a lesbian couple and Lola, who we would now recognise as a trans woman. The book’s design is reminiscent of a pulp novel, complete with yellow edges. The blurb contains the word “sensitive” which was often used by publishers in the earlier half of the twentieth century to allude to gay men. Wallace Hamilton (1919?-1983) also wrote non-fiction and plays and was a contributor to the ‘New York Native’ paper. Like his character Roger, he was married and came out when he was middle-aged.
• Forth into light
  Impossibly handsome lovers Peter Martin and Charlie Mills continue to work out their complicated romance. Peter, Charlie and sometime heterosexual love interest Martha – the Mills-Martins – are long-established in comfortable family life, complete with children (named Charlotte and Peter after their respective fathers), but newcomer Jeff still creates tension. This is the concluding part of the bestselling erotic trilogy by Gordon Merrick (1916-1988), following ‘The Lord Won’t Mind’ (1970) and ‘One for the Gods’ (1971), which were also seized in the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids. It is set on an island in the Aegean in the 1950s. Merrick himself had moved to the island of Hydra in 1960.
• If this isn't love! : (two men--twenty years--in three acts)
  Part of the ‘JH Press Gay Play Script’ series, this was one of the most successful plays performed at The Glines, a not-for-profit gay theatre company in New York. Written by Sidney Morris (Fineberg) (1929-2002), the play follows couple Eric and Adam across three acts representing three decades of gay life and experience, entitled ‘The Fearful Fifties’, ‘The Seeking Sixties’, and ‘The Succulent Seventies’. As the men age, they respond to increasing societal liberation and changes in their own relationship. Morris, whose own youth was in the 1950s, wanted to ensure that the gay community did “not forget our dark and absurd past”. Morris wrote a number of other plays with gay male themes. Terry Helbing from JH Press, the play’s publisher, was also the general manager of the play’s first run. Morris died from AIDS in 2002.
• Jack and Jim : a personal journal of the 70's
  In January 1970, Jim Brogan (1941-), a young college professor at San Francisco State University (SFSU), is about to be fired for participating in strike action. He is considering going back into therapy and thinks 1970 might be the year he finds love. By December, he has a permanent post. In August 1972, he meets the handsome Jack, and they begin seeing each other. These diaries, revised for publication by an extensive ensemble of Brogan’s friends, cover the decade up to 1981. They are a remarkable chronicle of long-term love and an ongoing search for personal, sexual and spiritual fulfilment. Brogan taught SFSU’s first lesbian and gay studies course and, with husband Jack Post, established three scholarships for the study and teaching of literature and sexuality.
• Notes from a marriage : love poems
  Since the mid-1970s, the creative output of Gavin Geoffrey Dillard (1954-) has encompassed many forms including poetry, songwriting and acting in pornographic films. This poetry collection, Dillard’s third, explores the emotional and sexual relationship between two young men, with some undertones of violence. It was published in New York by Felice Picano’s Sea Horse Press. In 1988, Australian gay rights activist Dennis Altman described Dillard as “the laureate of the sensual”, while Dillard’s poetry forms the basis of Clint Borzoni’s 2014 opera ‘When Adonis Calls’. Today, Dillard self-publishes books under his Gavin Dillard Poetry Library & Archive imprint and recently produced a new text and photographic edition of ‘Notes from a Marriage’.
• 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.
• P.S. your cat is dead
  A darkly comic exploration of the burgeoning relationship between down-on-his-luck actor Jimmy Zoole and a gay cat burglar he finds looting his apartment. This is the third novel from author and playwright James Kirkwood (1924-1989). According to biographer Sean Egan, Kirkwood was inspired by a series of burglaries at his home on West 58th Street, New York. In their 1979-80 catalogue, Philadelphia bookstore Giovanni’s Room described ‘P.S. Your Cat is Dead’ as “our all-time bestselling gay men’s novel”. Kirkwood adapted it into a play in 1975 and in 2002, it was adapted again into a feature film, directed by Steve Guttenberg, which was rather less well-received. Kirkwood’s ‘There Must Be a Pony!’ was also seized in ‘Operation Tiger’.
• Straight hearts' delight : love poems and selected letters, 1947-1980
  Containing thirty years of poetry and numerous letters, this book relates the lives and works of two key figures of the Beat Generation. Documenting chronologically the relationship between Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) and Peter Orlovsky (1933-2010), the book is not only a record of their love but also of the milieu in which they lived and worked. The book contains previously unpublished poems and is illustrated, including with a Richard Avedon photograph of the authors naked. Edited by Winston Leyland, the authors were involved in the book’s production and contributed footnotes. As with many Gay Sunshine Press (and Fag Rag) publications, it was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, an independent federal agency established by the US Congress.
• The Lord won't mind
  This is the opening book in a gay romance trilogy by Gordon Merrick (1916-1988), first published in 1970. Young, handsome and improbably well-endowed Charlie Mills is introduced to the equally attractive Peter Martin in late 1930s New Jersey. It is love – and lust – at first sight. Advertised in ‘The New York Times’ as “the first homosexual novel with a happy ending”, the book spent sixteen weeks in the ‘Times’ top ten, becoming a bestseller that secured Merrick’s fortunes. Criticised for its misogyny and as “corny, oddly dated and saccharine” by a discerning reviewer for ‘Gay NYC’, it nonetheless became a guilty pleasure for generations of gay men.
• Tricks : 25 encounters
  “Homosexuality”, Renaud Camus (1946-) reminds the reader of ‘Tricks’ in his foreword, “has a history, and of course, a geography”. These stories of sexual encounter, translated by distinguished gay poet Richard Howard (1929-2022), move from late 1970s Paris to Milan to the United States. In the preface, literary theorist Roland Barthes notes these short narratives’ simplicity, their repetitive nature, and also their status as literature rather than pornography. Each begins with a name and a date, before detailing a sexual liaison between Camus and a man he has never met before. Each ends with a note on their subsequent relationship (if any). Previously a columnist for ‘Gai Pied’ and a socialist, Camus is now a conspiracy theorist and white nationalist, who developed the far-right ‘Great Replacement’ theory.