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• Male love : a problem in Greek ethics and other writings
  Poet and literary critic John Addington Symonds (1840-1893) had several same-sex relationships both before and after his marriage in 1864 to Janet Catherine North, with whom he had four daughters. ‘A Problem in Greek Ethics’, an extensive study of sexuality in Ancient Greece, including the culturally sanctioned practice of pederasty (sex between men and adolescent boys), was written in 1873 and published privately a decade later in an edition of ten. In 1897, it was expanded as an appendix to sexologist Havelock Ellis’s ‘Sexual Inversion’ (though immediately suppressed) and was subsequently reprinted over the course of the twentieth century, often using fictitious imprints to avoid prosecution. The Pagan Press edition of 1983, edited by John Lauritsen, marked the centenary of the work’s first publication and was named one of the ten best gay books of the year by ‘The Advocate’ newspaper.
• 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.
• Perfect freedom
  This is another of Gordon Merrick’s (1916-1988) romance and sex novels published in paperback by Avon, with Victor Gadino illustrated covers. Avon was the paperback division of the Hearst Corporation, and ‘Gay Times’ claimed that publishing these novels was Avon's attempt to “cash in on the post-Stonewall gay market”. Based on one of his earlier novels, ‘Demon of Noon’ (1954) – an at-times-coded gay novel which is less explicit than his later work – this story is set in 1938 on a cruise in the Greek Islands and features Robbie’s sexual awakening with multiple partners. Some of the men he meets during his journey are listed and briefly described before the novel’s title page, including an “Italian deckhand”, a “Greek Adonis”, and a “brooding biker”. The title of the novel is a quote from E.M. Forster’s ‘The Longest Journey’.