Tuesday, May 11, 2010

43 books


43 Books
The Sophie Horowitz Story, Sarah Schulman, 1984, the Naiad Press Inc. “We all knew Laura Wolfe. She was part of a group known as Women Against Bad Things.  The New York Post headline read ANTI-AMERICAN, COMMIE, LEZZIE BLOOD-THIRSTY PIG over a copy of Laura’s high school graduation picture. I cleared a place on my desk and tacked her photo to the wall.”

We’ll do it ourselves: Combating sexism in Education, Barbara Yates, Steve Werner, David Rosen, 1974 University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska.
In the table of contents include; The Portrayal of Women In Children’s Books on Puerto Rican Themes, The Oppression of Gay People, Literature and our Gay Minority, Organizing Women’s Studies, A Question of Survival:  The Predicament of Black Women, The Gay Student Group, Afterthought: Lesbians As Gays and As Women. Also fantastic front and back cover.

Wives Who Love Women
, Jane Scott, 1978,Walker and Co. New York.
In this book a fifty-year-old woman comes out as a lesbian with the help of her husband. Takes place in LA.

So Long As There Are Women, Nine Lives of Women Who Prefer Women, Elula Perrin, William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, 1980.  The first chapter is titled You dirty dyke.  Elula Perrin owned the nightclub Katmandou in Paris. 


Gullibles Travels, writings by Jill Johnston. 1974, Links Books New York, NY.
CONTENTS; The Red Baroness in America, The Rightful Air to the Thrown, The Genius I’ve Squandered in Bed, Marykissmas & A Hippy Nude Year, Great Expectorations, There’ll Awe Ways Be an England, Oh Vade & Moder Goddelijk, In Excessive Deo, Gullibles Travels, Strange Degli Innocenti, Busted: Illegal Attire in the First Degree, Could I Have a Light, Elektra Reconsidered, The Yearly Mellowdrama, More Orphan Than Not, Call It a Day & a Day It Was, Holier Than Me, Hic Et Ubique, A Fair to Meddling Story, Tender Gluttons, As Anybody Lay Dying, Kraut Fishing in Amerika, Resurection for 40 Cents, Springjoyce, Atroxatrashajokajaxatrocious, Obsoletely Unadulterous, Writing into the Sunset, Delitism, Stardumb, & Leadershit, Women & Film, Hurricane Bella Sweeps the Country, The Holy Spirit Lucid in New York, R.D. Laing: The Misteek of Sighcosis, Time Wounds All Heals, Agnes Martin: Surrender & Solitude.

Sunday's Women: Lesbian Life Today
by Sasha G. Lewis
Here are the real-life joys and problems of growing up gay, coming out,
coping with friends and family, living with a lover's children and
creating a supportive lesbian family.  This book presents a comprehensive portrait of 70’s lesbian womanhood. Beacon Press, Boston

Riverfinger Woman Elana Nachman recounts what it was like to be a young gay woman in the 60’s.  It deals with what is real and what is imaginary. daughters,inc., Plainfield, Vermont

They Will Know Me By My Teeth, Elana dykewoman, With the publication of They Will Know Me By My Teeth (1976), Elana changed her surname to "Dykewoman," at once an expression of her strong commitment to the lesbian community and a way to keep herself "honest," since anyone reading the book would know the author was a lesbian. The stories and poems in the collection are written from within the lesbian community, addressing such issues as surgical breast reduction, masturbation, class, inventing creation myths, and mythic lesbian communities.
A Woman Appeared to me, Renee Vivien.  An autobiographical account of her love affair with Natalie Clifford Barney. Published in Paris in 1904. Jeannette H. Foster translated it into English. Cover and title page are by Tee A. Corinne.
Naiad Press, Inc., Talahassee, Florida.

Lesbian Lives, Biographies of Women from The Ladder. Edited by Barbara Grier and Coletta Ried. In 1955, In San Francisco, eight women met and formed the daughters of Bilitis.  In 1956 that group began publishing The Ladder. This book includes the biographies of over 75 lesbians such as Sappho, Edna St. Vincent Millay, H. D., Collette, Queen Christina of Sweden and Emelia Earhart.

Sapphic Songs Seventeen to Seventy, Elsa Gidlow
A collection of poems and amazing photographs of Elsa Gidlow throughout her life. Looking boyish, with cats, naked –from 17 to 70 like the book says. She wrote lesbian poems in 1919. She really put herself out there. Elsa Gidlow (1898 – 1986) was a poet, who in 1923 published the first volume of openly lesbian love poetry in the United States: On A Grey Thread. She promoted alternative spiritualities including Buddhism and Goddess Worship. In the 1940s she founded a rural retreat center, The Druid Heights Artists Retreat, in Marin County, California. She lived there until her death in 1986. Wikipedia lists Neil Young, Alan Watts, Ansel Adams and feminist theorist Catharine MacKinnon as friends of Elsa Gidlow.


The coming out stories, foreword Adrienne rich, Editors Julia Penelope Stanley and Susan J. Wolfe. Coming out stories published in 1980- Things were really different 30 years ago. Brave people who seem tormented tell their stories here. Not a lot of joy here but interesting info. Persephone Press, Watertown, Mass.

Lesbian Images, Jane Rule. This is a study of the work and lives of 12 well-known women writers (Radclyffe Hall, Gertrude Stein, Willa Cather, Vita Sackville-West, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Elizabeth Bowen, Colette, Violette Leduc, Margaret Anderson, Dorothy Baker, May Sarton and Maureen Duffy. 1975, Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, NY.

 Retreat: As it was! A fantasy by Donna J. Young, Naiad Press inc., 1979. Cover by Tee A. Corinne.  Retreat-A world of women beyond your imagination? What it was like before the men came. The cover is the best part of this curious gay sci fi work of fiction.

Nighthawk, Artemis OakGrove. Lace Publications, Denver, Colorado. 1987 described on it’s back cover as a “sexy novel about dangerous, inner city women…who play for keeps.” The cover illustration, by Vickie, is amazing and looks like a G.B. Jones drawing. You can see the cover at lesbiantreasures.blogspot.com.

sexism-it’s a nasty affair, jeanne cordova. New way books Hollywood, 1974.This book is in lower case from front to back, as are many feminist books written around this time. Everything about this book is great, the art, the cover, the writing & the font. Jeanne Cordova was the president of the LA daughters of Bilitis and founded Lesbian Tide.

The Lesbian Body, Monique Wittig. Beacon Press Boston. 1973. Author’s Note;
Le Corps Lesbian has lesbianism as its theme. A theme which cannot even be described as taboo, for it has no real existence in the history of literature. Male homosexual literature has a past, it has a present. The lesbians, for their part, are silent- just as all women are as women at all levels. When one has read the poems of Sappho Radclyffe Hall’s Well of Loneliness, the poems of Sylvia Plath and Anais Nin, La Batarde by Violette Leduc, one has read everything. Only the women’s movement has proved capable of producing lesbian texts in a context of total rupture with masculine culture, text written by women exclusively for women, careless of male approval. Le Corps Lesbien falls into this category.

Goddess of Lesbian dreams, poems and songs of fran winant, 1980, Violet Press, New York, NY.  Arlene Raven wrote the following on the back cover; “Read this book awake at night. Imagine that the moon has replaced the sun with her light. Walk outside to your won “Sacred Grove” your own place of waking dreams.
And on your way, move through your own form, Becoming Womanbeast, bird-fly- or take a taxi driven by a “Goddess of Lesbian dreams.” Recognize her (give her a tip). There are drawings with photographs of women taking pictures in trees, a song about winning the lottery and going to Tahiti and poems with titles like “Lesbian Nights”.  This is book is a lesbian treasure and was the inspiration for the title of my blog lesbiantreasures.blogspot.com.

Our Right To Love, A Lesbian Resource Book, produced in cooperation with women of the National Gay Task Force. An illustrated comprehensive guide for lesbians, students, teachers, parents, feminists, legislators, counselors, and movement organizers. Editor: Ginny Vida, Media director, National Gay Task Force. 1978, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
           
Andrea Dworkin, The New Woman’s Broken Heart, 1975, Fog In The Well, East Palo Alto, California. A collection of short stories. Here’s the title story; morning broke. I mean, fell right on its goddam ass and broke. no walking barefoot if you care about yr feet, kid.
I waited and waited. no call came. I cant say, the call didnt come because it wasnt a question of one really. it was a question of any one. it was a question of one goddam person calling to say I like this or that or I want to buy this or that or you moved my heart, my spirit, or I like yr ass. to clarify, not a man calling to say I like yr ass but one of those shining new women, luminous, tough, lighting right up from inside. one of them. or some of the wrecked old women I know, too late not to be wrecked, too many children torn right out of them, but still, I like the wrinkles, I like the toughness of the heart. one of them. not one of those new new new girl children playing soccer on the boys team for the first time. young is dumb. at least it was when I was young. I have no patience with the untorn, anyone who hasnt weathered rough weather. fallen apart, been ripped to pieces, put herself back together, big stitches, jagged cuts, nothing nice. then something shines out. but these ones all shined up on the outside, the ass wigglers. I'll be honest, I dont like them. not at all. the smilers. the soft voices, eyes on the ground or scanning outer space. its not that I wouldnt give my life for them, I just dont want them to call me on the telephone.
still, business is business. I needed one of them, the ass wigglers, to call me on the phone. editors. shits. smiling, cleaned up shits. plasticized turds. everything is too long or too short or too angry or too rude. one even said too urban. Im living on goddam east 5 street, dog shit, I mean, buried in dog shit, police precinct across the street sirens blazing day and night, hells angels 2 streets down, toilet in the hall and of course I have colitis constant diarrhea, and some asshole smiler says too urban. Id like to be gods editor. I have a few revisions Id like to make.
so I wait. not quietly, I might add. I sigh and grunt and groan. I make noise, what can I say. my cat runs to answer and then demands attention, absolutely demands. not a side glance either but total rapt absolute attention, my whole body in fact, not a hand, or a touch, or a little condescending pat on the head. I hiss. why not, I mean I speak the language so to speak.
which brings me to the heart of the matter. ladies. for instance, a lady would pretend she did not know exactly what to say to a cat that demanded her whole life on the spot. she would not hiss. she would make polite muted gestures. even if she were alone, she would act as if someone was watching her. or try to. she would push the cat aside with one hand, pretending gentle, but it would be a goddam rude push you had better believe it, and she would smile. at the window. at the wall. at the goddam cat if you can imagine that. me, I hiss. thus, all my problems in life. the ladies dare not respect hissers. they wiggle their goddam asses but hissers are pariahs. female hissers. male hissers are another story altogether.
for example, one morning I go to cover a story. I go 1500 miles to cover this particular story. now, I need the money. people are very coy about money, and the ladies arent just coy, they are sci fi about money. me, Im a hisser. I hate it but I need it. only I dont want to find it under the pillow the next morning if you know what I mean. I dont wear stockings and I want to buy my own hershey bars. or steal them myself at least. Id really like to give them up altogether. but I wouldnt really and its the only social lie I tell. anyway I pick my own health hazards and on my list sperm in situ comes somewhere below being eaten slowly by a gourmet shark and being spit out half way through because you dont quite measure up. its an attitude, what can I say. except to remind the public at large that the Constitution is supposed to protect it.
so I go to cover the story and the ass wigglers are out in large numbers. I mean they are fucking hanging from the chandeliers, and there are chandeliers. ritzy hotel. lots of male journalists. whither they goest go the ass wigglers.
so its a conference of women. and the point is that this particular event occurred because a lot of tough shining new women have demanded this and that, like men not going inside them at will, either naked or with instruments, to tear them up, knock them up, beat them up, fuck them up, etc. and suddenly, the ladies have crawled out of the woodwork. so I go to pee in the classy lounge where the toilets are, and one of the ass wigglers doesnt talk to me. I mean, Im peeing, shes peeing, so who the fuck does she think she is. so the line is drawn. but its been drawn before. in fact its been drawn right across my own goddam flesh, its been drawn in high heeled ladies boots trampling over me to get into print. I mean, I cant make a living. the boys like the ass wigglers.
so I work you know. I mean, I fucking work. but theres work I wont take on, like certain kinds of ass wiggling at certain specific moments. the crucial moments. like when the male editor wants that ass to move back and forth this way and that. as a result, I am what is euphemistically referred to as a poor person. I am ass breaking poor and no person either. a woman is what I am, a hisser, a goddam fucking poor woman who stays goddam fucking poor because she doesnt fuck various jerks around town.
its the white glove syndrome. the queen must be naked except for the white gloves. while hes fucking her raw she has to pretend shes sitting with her legs closed proper and upright and while hes sitting with his legs closed handing out work assignments she has to pretend shes fucking him until she drops dead from it. yeah its tough on her. its tougher on me.
I dont mean for this to be bitter. I dont know from bitter. its true that morning fell flat on its ass and when morning breaks its shit to clean it up. and I dont much like sleeping either because I have technicolor dreams in which strangers try to kill me in very resourceful ways. and its true that since the ass wiggler snubbed me in the toilet of the ritzy hotel I get especially upset when I go to pee in my own house (house here being a euphemism for apartment, room, or hovel--as in her own shithole which she does not in any sense own, in other words, where she hangs her nonexistent hat) and remember that the food stamps ran out and I have $11.14 in the bank. bleak, Arctic in fact, but not bitter. because I do still notice some things I particularly like. the sun, for instance, or the sky even when the sun isnt in it. I mean, I like it. I like trees. I like them all year long, no matter what. I like cold air. Im not one of those complainers about winter which should be noted since so many people who pretend to love life hate winter. I like the color red a lot and purple drives me crazy with pleasure. I churn inside with excitement and delight every time a dog or cat smiles at me. when I see a graveyard and the moon is full and everything is covered with snow I wonder about vampires. you cant say I dont like life.
people ask, well, dont sweet things happen? yes, indeed. many sweet things. but sweet doesnt keep you from dying. making love doesnt keep you from dying unless you get paid. writing doesnt keep you from dying unless you get paid. being wise doesnt keep you from dying unless you get paid. facts are facts. being poor makes you face facts which also does not keep you from dying.
people ask, well, why dont you tell a story the right way, you woke up then what happened and who said what to whom. I say thats shit because when you are ass fucking poor every day is the same. you worry. ok. she had brown hair and brown eyes and she worried. theres a story for you. she worried when she peed and she worried when she sat down to figure out how far the $11.14 would go and what would happen when it was gone and she worried when she took her walk and saw the pretty tree. she worried day and night. she choked on worry. she ate worry and she vomited worry and no matter how much she shitted and vomited the worry didnt come out, it just stayed inside and festered and grew. she was pregnant with worry, hows that? so how come the bitch doesnt just sell that ass if shes in this goddam situation and its as bad as she says. well, the bitch did, not just once but over and over, long ago, but not so long ago that she doesnt remember it. she sold it for a corned beef sandwich and for steak when she could get it. she sold it for a bed to sleep in and it didnt have to be her own either. she ate speed because it was cheaper than food and she got fucked raw in exchange for small change day after day and night after night. she did it in ones twos threes and fours with onlookers and without. so she figures shes wiggled her ass enough for one lifetime and the truth is she would rather be dead if only the dying wasnt so fucking slow and awful and she didnt love life goddam it so much. the truth is once you stop you stop. its not something you can go back to once its broken you in half and you know what it means. I mean, as long as youre alive and you know what trading in ass means and you stop, thats it. its not negotiable. and the woman for whom it is not negotiable is anathema.
for example, heres a typical vignette. not overdrawn, underdrawn. youre done yr days work, fucking. youre home. so some asshole man thinks thats his time. so he comes with a knife and since hes neighborhood trade you try to calm him down. most whores are pacifists of the first order. so he takes over yr room, takes off his shirt, lays down his knife. thats yr triumph. the fuck isnt anything once the knife is laid down. only the fuck is always something. you have to pretend that you won. then you got to get him to go but hes all comfy isnt he. so another man comes to the door and you say in an undertone, this fuckers taken over my house. so it turns out man 2 is a hero, he comes in and says what you doing with my woman. and it turns out man 2 is a big drug dealer and man 1 is a fucking junkie. so you listen to man 1 apologize to man 2 for fucking his woman. so man 1 leaves. guess who doesnt leave? right. man 2 is there to stay. so he figures hes got you and he does. and he fucking tries to bite you to death and you lie still and groan because you owe him and he fucking bites you near to death. between yr legs, yr clitoris, he fucking bites and bites. then he wants breakfast. so once you been through it enough, enough is enough.
ah, you say, so this explains it, whores hate men because whores see the worst, what would a whore be doing with the best. but the truth is that a whore does the worst with the best. the best undress and reduce to worse than the rest. besides, all women are whores and thats a fact. at least all women with more than $11.14 in the bank. me too. shit, I should tell you what I did to get the $11.14. nothing wrong with being a whore. nothing wrong with working in a sweatshop. nothing wrong with picking cotton. nothing wrong with nothing.
I like the books these jerko boys write. I mean, and get paid for. its interesting. capital, labor, exploitation, tomes, volumes, journals, essays, analyses. all they fucking have to do is stop trading in female ass. apparently its easier to write books. it gives someone like me a choice. laugh to death or starve to death. Ive always been pro choice. the ladies are very impressed with those books. its a question of physical coordination. some people can read and wiggle ass simultaneously. ambidextrous.
so now I’m waiting and thinking. Anne Frank and Sylvia Plath leap to mind. they both knew Nazis when they saw them, at some point. there were a lot of ass wigglers in the general population around them wiggling ass while ovens filled and emptied. wiggling ass while heroes goosestepped or wrote poetry. wiggling ass while women, those old fashioned women who did nothing but hope or despair, died. this new woman is dying too, of poverty and a broken heart. the heart broken like fine china in an earthquake, the earth rocking and shaking under the impact of all that goddam ass wiggling going off like a million time bombs. an army of whores cannot fail--to die one by one so that no one has to notice. meanwhile one sad old whore who stopped liking it has a heart first cracked then broken by the ladies who wiggle while they work.
"the new womans broken heart" copyright © 1978, 1979, 1980 by Andrea Dworkin. All rights reserved. First published in Heresies, Vol. 2, No. 3, spring 1979.





A lesbian feminist anthology, AMAZON EXPEDITION, edited by Phyllis Birkby, Bertha Harris, Jill Johnston, Esther Newton and Jane O’wyatt. 1973, Times Change Press, Washinton NJ. Includes The Comingest Womanifesto by Jill Johnston, The New Misandry by Joanna Russ and The Parable of Mothers and Daughters by Florence Rush.

The Fur Person, May Sarton, 1957, Holt, Rinehart & Winston. The back cover reads “This charming story is drawn from the true adventures of May Sarton’s own cat and recounts his evolution from a Cat-About-Town to a Gentleman Cat and finally his emergence as a genuine Fur Person”. Illustrated by David Cartright.

The Lesbian Reader, 1975, Amazon Press. Edited by Gina Covina and Laurel Galana.  This book includes How to Make a Magazine, Toward a Womanvision and Radical Reproduction: X Without Y by Laurel Galana as well as Hands by Maud Haimson, I dream in Female: The Metaphors of Evolution by Barbara Starrett and Waiting for Something to Happen by Jennie Orvino. I may have ripped The Lesbian Love Ethic out of this book to use in a photogram – collaboration with Anna. I did.  I found bookmark in this book from the sisterhood bookstore in Los Angeles.

The immaculate conception of the blessed virgin dyke, Ellen Marie Bissert, 1972, 13th Moon, Inc. Poems by Ellen Marie Bissert. Nice photograph on the back cover.

Class & Feminism, A Collection of Essays from THE FURIES, Diana Press,1974, Edited by Charlotte bunch and Nancy Myron.
Essays include; The Last Straw by Rita Mae Brown, Gimme Shelter by Tasha Peterson, Class Beginnings by Nancy Myron,  Slumming it in the Middle Class by Giny Berson, Recycled Trash by Coletta Reid, Revolution Begins at Home by Coletta Reid and Charlotte Bunch and Garbage Among the Trash by Delores Bargowski and Coletta Reid.

Lesbian Feminism in Turn-of-the-century Germany edited by Lillian Feverman and Brigitte Eriksson. 1980 The Naiad Press. This book includes portions of; The New Eve: Modern Education and Old Morality by Maria Janitschek(1906), Of The New Woman and Her Love: A Book for Mature Minds, Elisabeth Dauthendey(1900), The Truth About Me, E. Krause from Yearbook of Intermediate Sexual Types( Leipzig, 1901), Are These Women?, Aimee Duc (Berlin,1903), What Interest does the Women’s Movement Have in the homosexual Question? By Anna Rueling (Berlin, 1904).

Lesbian Nuns Breaking Silence edited by Roesmary Curb & Nancy Manahan, Naiad Press, 1985. “Lesbian nuns I know are going to dance! In convents this book will go around like hotcakes, just the way THE HITE REPORT did.  Everybody read it. Lesbian nuns will be more self-conscious about this book. They’re also going to be listening for the response from other members of the community and praying to God it’s okay.”

To the man reporter from the Denver Post, Poems by Chocolate Waters, Eggplant Press, 1975. Some of the poems in this book appeared in Lavender Woman, off our backs, Desperate Living, Women’s Press, So’s Your Old Lady and Big Mama Rag.  There’s a nice pencil drawing of a vigina in a landscape.

Mother, Sister, Daughter, Lover Stories by Jan Clausen, 1975, The Crossing Press, Trumansburg, New York. “Jan Clausen is a lesbian lover editor clerical worker non-biological parent political activist runner writer. “

Loving Women, The Nomadic Sisters, Illustrated by Ann Miya, 1976. An illustrated sex manual for lesbians. Great drawings.

Old Dyke Tales, Lee Lynch, The Naiad Press, Inc., 1984. 

Fernhurst, Q.E.D, and Other Early Writings
, Gertrude Stein, 1950, The Banyan Press. Stein is the author of one of the earliest coming out stories, Q.E.D. (published in 1950 as Things as They Are), written in 1903 and suppressed by the author. The story, written during travels after dropping out, is based on a love triangle she joined while studying at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. The triangle was complicated in that Stein was less experienced with the closeted social dynamics of romantic friendship as well as her own sexuality and any moral dilemmas regarding it. Stein maintained at the time that she detested "passion in its many disguised forms". The relationships of Stein's acquaintances Mabel Haynes and Grace Lounsbury ended as Haynes started one with Mary Bookstaver (also known as May Bookstaver). Stein fell in love with Bookstaver but was unsuccessful in advancing their relationship. Bookstaver, Haynes, and Lounsbury all later married men. (Blackmer 1995, p. 681-686)
Her growing awareness of her sexuality began to interfere with the bourgeois values implicit in her medical studies[citation needed] and would have put her at odds with contemporary feminist theory and opinion[citation needed], and Q.E.D. may have assisted her with understanding her scholarly and romantic failure. However, Stein began to accept and define her masculinity through the ideas of Otto Weininger's Sex and Character (1906). Weininger, though Jewish by birth, considered Jewish men effeminate and women as incapable of selfhood and genius, except for female homosexuals who may approximate masculinity. –from wikipedia- nuts.

Common Lives, Lesbian Lives, A Lesbian Quarterly, number twenty-one. 1986 Includes photographs of “desert dykes and dogs” by zana, Lesbian Ritual Art by Ramona Star Scarpace, Tarot Card by Ruth Mountaingrove.
Poems titled “Love Me Like You Mean It” and “After a Year of Celibacy”

Tracking Our Way Through Time: A Lesbian Herstory Calendar Journal, Janet S. Soule, 1984, Sandpiper Books, Chicago, IL. A calendar & journal that catalogs facts, photos, quotes and graphics drawn from lesbians.

True to Life Adventure Stories, Volume two, Judy Grahn, Editor, The Crossing Press, 1978.
“As soon as I received True to Life Adventure Stories, Vol.2, I sat down and read Linda Maries’ ‘Straight Woman.’ When I had finished laughing, I moved on to the wonderful ‘Tehuantepec,’ and so on through the book. These are stories so real, so vibrant, so outrageous that, yes indeed, they are true to life. An adventure not to be missed.” -Alice Walker

sinister wisdom 33, Fall 1987, editor and publisher Elana Dykewomon, A Journal for the Lesbian Imagination in the Arts and Politics. Contents include A Dyke Geography by Elana Dykewomon, photographs, poems, drawings and stories.

Six of One, Rita Mae Brown

A Lesbian Estate by Lynn Lonidier, 1977, Manroot, South San Francisco. Poems by Lynn Lonidier: I Hear You Guarded Two-Sex,  Say My Name, A Mother Is A Broken Mustard Jar, Falconess and Lightfoot of Fairies.

the lesbian primer. liz diamond  Illustrations by carol arber. Salem, MA: Women's Educational Media, 1979

Madame Aurora, Sarah Aldridge, 1983, the Naiad Press Inc.
“Elizabeth Beaufort: beautiful, impoverished scholar who has eked out a living as a teacher until deafness and a scandal over a book about love intervene.” Early American lesbian scandals.

The Amazon of Letters, The Life and Loves of Natalie Barney, George Wickes, Popular Library, New York, 1976.  Great photographs of Renee Vivien dressed in one of many outfits that helped inspire “Orlando” by Virginia Woolf.

Lesbian Love in Literature edited by Stella Fox, 1962, Avon Book division, New York. Includes stories by Sappho, Guy de Maupassant, Kay Boyle and Fyodor Dostoevsky.  The varieties of Lesbian experience…
A young boy discovers his dead father has been replaced by a woman, a dissatisfied wife learns that she and her husband love the same woman, a young girl falls in love with father’s mistress, a college girl initiates her roommate, a French woman dressed in man’s clothes looks for her lovers and a student learns about love from her teacher. 


Violette Leduc, Mad in Pursuit, 1972, Panther Books, London. In the second remarkable volume of her life story, Mad In Pursuit, the war is finally over. A new generation of writers has appeared in Paris, among them Camus, Genet, Startre, and Cocteau, and every day, they can be seen writing at the marble-topped tables of the Cafe de Flore. Already in her thirties Leduc burns with hero-worship and an obsession to become a celebrated writer herself. When she finds a mentor in none other than Simone de Beauvoir, she is pulled into the center of Parisian literary life -- "a beehive gone mad. "In the no-holds-barred style that made her a legend, Leduc paints a vibrant picture of the brilliant minds around her -- and the dark passions and insecurities that drove her to write.