Items

• A comfortable corner
  Set in 1980s New York, this second novel by Vincent Virga (1942-) deals with the issue of alcoholism within the gay community and how it affects couple Terence and Christopher. Reviews of the novel acknowledged the importance of the theme, but noted it was presented in a florid style, described by one reviewer as “‘purple’ (lavender?) prose”. The novel is dedicated to the memory of American artist, Jackson Pollock, who suffered from alcoholism. The book was published in a mass market edition by Avon Books, publishers of Virga’s first novel, ‘Gaywyck’, which was also seized during ‘Operation Tiger’.
• An idol for others
  Biographer Joseph M. Ortiz claims that Gordon Merrick (1916-1988) “was the most commercially successful writer of gay novels in the twentieth century”. After a moderately successful career as a literary post-war novelist in the 1940s and 1950s, published by important trade presses, it was as the author of paperback gay romance novels, with sex featuring heavily, that Merrick gained success. This novel focusses on theatre producer Walter Makin, an apparently happily married father, who also has gay relationships. The back cover of this paperback outlines the roles played by each of the characters and makes clear that incest is a feature of this novel (Jerry, one of Walter’s lovers, is also his illegitimate son). One reviewer described the novel’s unhappy ending as a return to the 1950s, when gay characters were rarely shown living fulfilled lives.
• And God bless Uncle Harry and his roommate Jack : who we're not supposed to talk about : cartoons from Christopher Street
  ‘Christopher Street’, named after the New York location of the Stonewall Inn, was a gay magazine which ran for almost twenty years. Founded in 1976 by Charles Ortleb (1950?-) and co-publisher Dorianne Beyer, the magazine published fiction and non-fiction and aimed to be a “cultural forum”. The magazine also prided itself on its satirical cartoons, a selection of which are collected in this book, published by mass market imprint Avon Books. The cartoons were often presented in a sophisticated style similar to the noted ‘New Yorker’ magazine. The titular cartoon, which is featured on the front cover, is by TABBAT, while several cartoons were drawn by the magazine's art director, Rick Fiala, using a range of pseudonyms.
• 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.
• Fox Running : a novel
  The fourth novel for teenagers by R.R. Knudson (1932-2008), again with a sporting theme (‘You Are the Rain’, about a doomed canoe trip, was another of the books seized in ‘Operation Tiger’). Fox Running is a Mescalero Apache girl in her late teens, coached by young former Olympian Kathy ‘Sudden’ Hart. To research the novel, Knudson spent time at the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico and with an athletics track team at the University of Arizona. ‘Fox Running’ was first published by Harper & Row in 1975 before being reprinted by Avon in 1977 and as an Avon Flare paperback in 1981. The inside illustrations are by Ilse Koehn and are reproduced from the Harper & Row edition.
• Independence day
  “What does it mean when you fall in love with your best friend?”, asks the cover of this coming-of-age story, which depicts identically clad high-school students Mike and Todd. Mike decides to tell Todd how he feels about him on 4 July – Independence Day in the US – and although Todd does not feel the same, this proto-Young Adult novel models understanding and acceptance. By its close, Mike has “dated several guys” in college and is taking a course “to become a counselor to gay kids”. B.A. Ecker includes a reference to another of the books erroneously seized in ‘Operation Tiger’, Patricia Nell Warren’s ‘The Front Runner’ (1974), which Mike “really found some comfort reading”. ‘Independence Day’ appears to be Ecker’s only published work.
• Now let's talk about music
  Riding high on his wildly popular Peter and Charlie trilogy (also seized by Customs), Gordon Merrick (1916-1988) continued to publish paperback romances with Avon into the 1980s. ‘Now Let’s Talk About Music’ gave Merrick’s fans more of what they wanted – exotic locations (Thailand, a yacht off the coast of Sri Lanka), rich, beautiful gay men, steamy sex scenes and page-turning drama. “Another winner from the gay Harold Robbins” proclaimed a reviewer for ‘Gay News’ in December 1982. As with several other Merrick titles published by Avon, the cover art is by Victor Gadino, a noted illustrator of romance and erotica.
• 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’.
• The journey
  This knowingly ahistorical lesbian feminist Western, set in Canada and the US in the nineteenth century, is dedicated to “all the little girls who always wanted to [...] grow up to be cowboys”. Teenager Anne leaves home and teams up with sex worker Sarah. Travelling together across the Pacific Northwest, they become lovers, have a child and receive support from a matrilineal group of Indigenous people. Despite reversing gender roles, the novel is in other ways a romp through the stereotypes of the Western genre – wagons, guns, vigilante justice. Anne Cameron (1938-2022) was a prolific writer of fiction for adults and children, as well as poetry and drama for stage and screen. Born Barbara Cameron, she later wrote under the name Cam Hubert. ‘The Journey’, her third novel, was reissued in 1986 by feminist press Spinsters/Aunt Lute.
• 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.
• The quirk
  As with other Gordon Merrick (1916-1988) novels published by Avon Books, the cover of ‘The Quirk’ is the work of artist Victor Gadino. The style of these Avon paperbacks alludes to the romances published by Mills and Boon in the UK (or Harlequin in the USA), but in this case, they are aimed at gay readers. Gadino used male models as the basis of his illustrations which, unusually for the time, depict the men together and looking at each other rather than separate and isolated. In this instance, the full illustration wraps around the front and back covers. This novel centres on Rod, a bisexual artist in 1960s Paris who has relationships with men and a woman during the novel.
• The story of Harold
  Underground classic ‘The Story of Harold’ was written under the pseudonym Terry Andrews by acclaimed children’s author George Selden (1929-1989), best-known for ‘The Cricket in Times Square’, winner of a Newbery Honor in 1961. It describes the mostly doomed, often sadomasochistic affairs of a bisexual children’s author named Terry Andrews – whose children’s book, ‘The Story of Harold’, is wildly popular – but who is otherwise on the verge of emotional and physical breakdown. Andrews finds healing by re-working incidents in his own life through stories about his character, Harold, which he relates to the young sons of his friend and lover. The novel is illustrated with several full-page pen-and-ink drawings by Edward Gorey, known for ‘The Gashlycrumb Tinies’ and ‘The Doubtful Guest’ among other works.