1943. A brief variant relationship proves beneficial to a hysterical invalid.

CRADOCK, PHYLLIS. Gateway to Remembrance. Andrew Dakers, London 1950. fco. Very brief mention of a lesbian couple in a sappy metaphysical novel about Lost Atlantis.

CRAIG, JONATHAN. Case of the Village Tramp. pbo Gold Medal 1959. Fast, well-written mystery introduces a pair of lesbians among the suspects; good entertainment.

+ CRAIGIN, ELISABETH. Either is Love. Harcourt, Brace, 1937, pbr Lion Books, 1952, 1956, Pyramid 1960. After the death of her husband the narrator re-reads the letters she had written him about her intense love affair with another woman. Almost unequalled treatment of a lesbian romance.

CREAL, MARGARET. A Lesson in Love. Simon & Schuster 1957. A Canadian orphan’s passion for a beautiful schoolmate ends in disillusion when the older girl, Tammy, tries to force Nicola into a distasteful affair with a boy, the better to deceive her mother about a similar affair of her own.

CROUZAT, HENRI. The Island at the End of the World. Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1959. An ex-schoolteacher, Patrice, is marooned on a sub-Antarctic island with three nurses; Joan, a nymphomanic; Victoria, a lesbian, and Kathleen, a quite ordinary girl. Due to fortuitous circumstances, they manage to assure themselves the necessities of life, and between Robinson-Crusoe-ish struggles, embark on a round of excesses gradually diminished by the horrible deaths of Kathleen, then Victoria. Fascinating, slightly macabre.

+ CUSHING, MARY WATKINS. The Rainbow Bridge. G P Putnam’s Sons, 1954. This book is included for the light it sheds on another novel in this list, Marcia Davenport’s Of Lena Geyer, and not for the sake of any impertinent conclusions about the real people involved. Mrs. Cushing served for seven years as companion and buffer against the world for the famous prima donna, Olive Fremstad, and Mme. Fremstad’s reclusive, fantastically disciplined personality seems to have served, at least in part, as model for Lena Geyer. At any rate, both books become more interesting when read together.

DANE, CLEMENCE. (pseud. of Winifred Ashton); Regiment of Women. Macmillan, 1917. Possibly the earliest novel of variance. A lengthy book of the subtle sadism of the domineering headmistress of a girl’s school.

DARIUS, MICHEL. I, Sappho of Lesbos. Castle Books, May 1960. Supposedly translated from a Medieval Latin manuscript conveniently lost on the Andrea Doria. In first-person, this weaves the better-known traditions about Sappho into a racy, fast-moving novel. The lesbian content is not emphasized,18 unduly. Writing-wise, this invites comparison with the work of Pierre Louys. The “scholarship” is completely tongue-in-cheekish, of course, as with the Songs of Bilitis. In general, this should prove the Title of the Year for those who wonder why they don’t write like Pierre Louys anymore. (Department of Unpaid Advertising; this one can NOW be ordered through Winston Book Service; see Appendix.)

DAVENPORT, MARCIA. Of Lena Geyer. Scribner, 1936. Well-known novel of the life of an opera singer. Lena has a young satellite and adorer, but Elsie is careful to say that while “gossip has had many cruel things to say of this friendship ... there was, needless to say, not a word of truth in the essential accusation.” The two women remain together, even after Lena’s marriage, until her death.

DAVEY, WILLIAM. Dawn Breaks the Heart. Howell Soskin & Co, 1941. A lengthy episode involves the sensitive hero’s elopement with Vivian, an irresponsible girl who turns out to be a lesbian and leaves him for another woman. Excellent.

DAVIES, RHYS. “Orestes”, ss in The Trip to London. N. Y. Howell Soskin & Co, 1946. A lesbian manages to free the protagonist of a mother-complex, because her attitude is free of feminine seductiveness.

+ DAVIS, FITZROY. Quicksilver. Harcourt, Brace, 1942. Hilarious novel of the theatre, supposedly based on actual personalities recognizable to the initiate; my reviewer wrote that some theatrical people “literally turn purple at the mere mention of this book ... most real pro actors detest portrayal of homosexuality in theatre fiction, bad publicity and all that ... can’t say I blame them much.”

DAY, MAX. So Nice, So Wild. pbo, Stanley Library Inc, 1959. Evening waster; an impossibly complicated murder-story plot with a hero who, trying to prove he didn’t murder his own uncle, is pestered by all sorts of girls crawling into his bunk, blondes, brunettes and a few lesbians trying hard to convert themselves to heterosexuality. Funny, real fun.

DEAN, RALPH. One Kind of Woman. pbo, Beacon, 1959. Evening waster.

Forbidden Thrills. pbo Bedtime Books 1959. Scv.

DEBUSSY, ROY.

—and Jay Arpage; Non Stop Flight, Brookwood 1958.

—and Cleo Dorene; Fountain of Youth, Brookwood 1958.

—and Arthur Maurier; Wicked Curves, Brookwood 1958.

—and Les Maxime; Eye Lust, Brookwood 1959.

—and Les Maxime; The Golden Nymph, Brookwood 1958.

These are all hardcover risque novels retailing for about $3 in bookstores which deal in that sort of thing for the adult trade only; I don’t know, not being a postal inspector, whether they19 can legally be sent through the U S Mails. On the whole I would think not. They are all fairly well written for books of their kind, amusing and entertaining, and bear about the same relationship to the paperback scv—evening wasters that ESQUIRE does to the average cheaper girly magazine. They are, however, strictly for a male audience; the “lesbian” content in all of them is presented from a strip-tease point of view and in every case the girl involved is “cured” of this perversion by male seduction—in some cases, by brutality. The plot of Non Stop Flight is typical; hero Eric Leighton discovers his wife dallying with a lesbian, so he beats up and rapes the lesbian (juicily described) whereupon his wife commits suicide. Then Eric gets involved with Celia, a stereotype “dish” with an ineffectual husband; when Celia tires of him he beats her up and rapes her (juicily described) then runs across the lesbian who has seduced his wife and Celia, so he beats her up and rapes her again (juicily described) after which Eric and the lesbian get married and live very happily forever after. I don’t know precisely what to call these books, but lesbiana is hardly descriptive. You have been warned.

DEISS, JAY. The Blue Chips. Simon & Schuster 1957, pbr Bantam 1958. fco. In an excellent novel of medical laboratory workers, a very very minor lesbian character.

DE FORREST, MICHAEL. The Gay Year. N. Y., Woodford Press, 1949, (m). Happily untypical of this publisher’s racy trash, this story of a young man searching for self-knowledge in New York’s Bohemias is very good of its’ kind.

DELL, FLOYD. Diana Stair. Farrar & Rinehart, 1932. Long novel of the early 19th century. Diana is a woman writer, but also explores life as mill-girl, school-teacher and abolitionist. Though attracted to, and attractive to men, she is never without “some older woman to adore and emulate, or some younger woman to teach and inspire.” Delightful, ironic novel of the trouble women can get into when they refuse to fall neatly into the