The rise of lesbian pulp fiction relied on several economic, legal, and social factors.

Queer Life in the 1950s & 60s:

• After the Great Depression and World War II, there was a push for stability in American culture, and the dominant society believed that stability should come from the heterosexual, nuclear family 
• In 1948 and 1953, Alfred Kinsey published his reports on sexuality, and homosexuality, especially lesbianism, became a topic of nationwide curiosity 
• In the dominant society, however, homosexuality was seen as a mental illness
• Gay and lesbian bars were often raided by police
• Gay men and lesbians could be barred from employment in governmental and related occupations, and actively persecuted as security risks to their countries

For more information, visit Montana State University Billings Library Guide on LGBTQ History. 

Pulp books:

• Pulp books come from the tradition of dime novels and penny dreadfuls from the mid-19th century
• With the development of groundwood paper, made from the pulp of wood fibers (hence the name pulp fiction), the mass market paperback took off
• Pulp magazines and novels could be mass-produced for little cost and could be found at drugstores for a nickel, a dime, or a quarter
• Because of the cheap quality paper, the books are fragile. They weren’t made to last, but instead meant to be read quickly and then tossed
• During World War II, pulps were given for free to American and Canadian troops as entertainment. Pulps often focused on ‘edgy’ topics like murder, gangs, drug use, and male homosexuality
• After the war, the demand for such cheap, printed entertainment remained high, especially since movie and television industries had self-imposed morality codes that avoided risqué topics

For more information, visit the University of Minnesota's Library Guide on Dime Novels, Story Papers, Series Books, and Pulps 

Lesbian Pulp Books:

• In 1950, Fawcett Gold Medal Books published the first pulp novel with overtly lesbian themes, Tereska Torres's Women’s Barracks
• Paperback publishers jumped at the new market for books about lesbians, and the lesbian pulp genre was born

For more information, visit The Lesbian Pulp Fiction Collection @ Mount Saint Vincent University

Obscenity Laws:

• During the publishing boom of the mid-twentieth century, the paperback industry received intense scrutiny from political and religious authorities, especially concerning lesbian pulps 
• Public hysteria amassed as the National Organization for Decent Literature (NODL) threatened vendors with boycotts if they did not remove offensive materials from their shelves
• As a result, censorship was subtle so as to be anti-communist and allow for the continued publication of lesbian pulps. Publishers included loose morals about the supposed dangers of homosexuality, and most of their books resulted in tragic endings for lesbian protagonists to affirm that the publisher did not support lesbian content

For more information, visit The Lesbian Pulp Fiction Collection @ Mount Saint Vincent University

Lesbian pulp books can be identified through many reoccurring themes. The following bulleted lists describe some of the most common tropes and literary motifs that are found across many lesbi-pulp titles. 

Language:

The front and back covers of pulp books often include specific language or ‘code words’ to notify the reader that the book will contain lesbian themes. 
Examples of such language: 

• Odd 
• Shadows 
• Sin 
• Third (way, sex, street, etc) 
• Twilight
• Strange 
• Whisper 
• Forbidden 

Settings:

Examples of the most common settings found in lesbian pulps: 

• New York City 
• Specifically Greenwich Village 
• Suburbia 
• Gay and Lesbian Bars 
• Women’s War Barracks 
• Women’s Prisons 
• College 
• Sorority/All Girl’s School 
• Dystopic Futures without Men 

Motifs:

The text itself also contains recurring literary themes and motifs: 

• Power Difference Relationships

• Age difference relationships 

• Predatory or Aggressive Lesbian - lure a submissive lesbian into a ‘lesbian prostitution ring’ or unequal power dynamic relationship

• Racism

  • Lesbian pulps were written and marketed primarily to white audiences. If there is racialized subject matter, it is usually in the form of an interracial lesbian relationship, and the race issues are always made out to be just as taboo as lesbianism, and often the white woman has some kind of power over the Black woman. Rea Michaels's books are some of the only examples of pulps with interracial lesbian couples, usually with the narration centered on the Black woman. However, there is very little information about Michaels, and it’s possible the name was a pseudonym

• Love triangles 

  • Bisexual love triangle 

    • A woman must choose between a woman or man suitor 

  • Straight man attempts to reform a lesbian 

  • Lesbian love triangle 

• Gender dynamics 

  • Many pulp lesbian relationships center on the butch/femme dynamic, in which one is the more masculine/androgynous presenting lesbian, and the other, the femme, is completely feminine-presenting 

• Identity Formation

  • Many pulps explore the question of the origins of homosexuality in an individual: 

    • Biological determinism 

      • ‘Born’ a lesbian 

    • Psychological determinism 

      • Rape/Incest/Abuse by a man or family member

      • Absence of a mother or father figure 

      • Alcoholism/Addiction

    • Choice 

      • A cognitive choice to become a lesbian 

Genres: 

Certain lesbian pulps employ genres other than romance: 

• Sci-fi 
  • The golden era of lesbian pulp coincided with that of science-fiction pulp, creating abundant opportunities to explore new
    potentialities of gender and sexuality
• Detective/Mystery 
  • There are a handful of pulps about lesbian detectives solving crime
• Nonfiction “true life” Accounts 
  • These pulps advertise themselves as nonfiction accounts of lesbian life, either in the form of real case studies of lesbians, or as pseudo-scientific analyses by ‘doctors’ 

Pro-lesbian authors

Over time, lesbian authors, and some straight men and women, began to write lesbian pulps of their own, putting forth more sympathetic portrayals of lesbian love. These 'Pro-Lesbian Pulps' became survival literature for queer people in the 50s and 60s who had few other positive representations of their identity in media. Given that gay and lesbian lifestyles were illegal in the United States in the 1950s, many of the pro-lesbian pulp authors published their work under pseudonyms to protect their true 
identities. 

• Many pro-lesbian authors were employed in publishing firms as clerks or secretaries before they were able to break through as published authors 
• Similarly, many pro-lesbian authors were middle or lower class 
• Authors were paid between $200 and $500 in advance and then royalties of 1 cent per copy on the initial print order
• Despite pro-lesbian authors writing within the obscenity law constraints of the genre, they often ingrained sympathetic, kind, loving portrayals of homosexual life in their novels 

This is a list of some of the most notable pro-lesbian pulp authors and their pseudonyms if they used one. In many cases, there is little information about authors and whether they used a pseudonym at all.

Male Authors

When the commercial market for pulps with lesbian subject matter was first discovered, the genre was controlled by male authors who depicted ridiculously fetishized portraits of lesbian life. They usually used female pseudonyms to seem more authentic. These male-authored lesbian pulps are known as ‘Virile Adventures’ because they were made by and for the male heterosexual gaze.

This is a list of the most notable male authors of virile adventure pulps and their pseudonyms if they used one. In many cases, there is little information about authors and whether they used a pseudonym at all. 

Notable Paperback Publishing Houses:

• Avalon Books
• Avon Books 
• Bantam Books 
• Dell Paperbacks 
• Epic Books
• Fawcett Publications
• Holloway House - publisher for lesbians of color
• Lancer Books 
• Midwood-Tower Publications
• Monarch Books 
• Naiad Press - first publishing house dedicated to lesbian literature
• Popular Library
• Vega 

For more information, visit The Lesbian Pulp Fiction Collection @ Mount Saint Vincent University

Marketing & Paperback Publishing Trends

Paperback presses had very specific tactics for marketing their lesbian pulp books:

• Utilized sexualized or scandalous cover art and blurbs to entice buyers
• Authors had no say whatsoever in the title, cover art, or cover blurbs of their work 
• Publishers often repackaged novels with new titles and cover art to maximize their profits
• To avoid being seized for obscenity, publishers required authors to end their books tragically (i.e. the lesbian couple breaks up, the main character dies, or turns straight, or is hospitalized) to make it known that the publisher did not support sympathetic portrayals of lesbianism 
• Publishers and cover artists rarely read the actual text of the books 
• Used “house names” so that multiple authors could ghost-write behind one pseudonym

After the Golden Age:

• The golden age of lesbian pulp fiction runs from around 1950-1965
• After 1965, censorship laws began to relax, allowing for more sexually explicit books and book covers 
• Soft and hardcore pornography presses emerged as the new, popular books for male adventures and by the mid-late 1960s, mainstream presses published very few lesbian-themed stories 
• At the same time, the women’s movement was on the rise, and lesbian authors turned to publishing their works with feminist and lesbian presses through the 1970s and 1980s

Popular Feminist and Lesbian Presses of the 1970s-80s (after the golden age of lesbian pulp) 

• A&M Books
• Bella Books
• Bold Strokes Books    
• Cleis Press
• Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press
• Naiad Press
• Onlywomen Press
• Sister Vision: Black Women & Women of Color Press
• Spinsters Ink
   

Pulp books are characterized by their sensationalized, hyper-realistic art style, erotic, and often absurd cover art. These covers were meant to lure in the straight male reader. 

Covers often featured women, but the number of women and how they are positioned provide essential information to the reader about what kind of lesbian content is in store: 

• Solitary Woman 
  • Nude or dressed provocatively 
  • Looking at the reader: implying a beseeching nature 
  • Looking away from the reader: implying shame 
  • Figure of a woman cloaked in shadows to imply repressed nature
• Two Women
  • Touching each other to imply a romantic relationship
  • Exchanging emotions through their eyes: unrequited love, innocence lost, coy flirtations, outright lust, ecstasy
  • One or both women in a state of undress to imply promiscuity 
  • One woman is looking at the other while the other looks away to suggest an imbalanced power relationship dynamic 

• Butch/femme dynamics 
  • Gender is represented in these covers as well. If there are two women and they have different hair color or lengths, often the lighter and longer hair is the femme and the shorter, darker hair is the butch
  • “The badder they are, the darker the hair” - Jaye Zimet
• Three or more women/Mixed Gender
  • Love triangles and menage a trois are popular themes at the time and represented through cover art 
  • If a man is present, he is usually standing in the back looking embarrassed, hostile, or sexually deprived 

For more information, read Jaye Zimet’s Strange Sisters: The Art of Lesbian Pulp Fiction of 1949-1969

Notable Cover Artists 

• Paul Rader
• Robert Maguire 
• Bernard Safran
• Victor Olsen
• Tom Miller
• Robert McGinnis 
• Barye Phillips
• George Ziel 
• Al Wagner 
• Jerome Podwil 
• John Healy