Olivia...a love that dared not tell its name

Do you remember a time when it seemed like every waking moment was consumed with thoughts of one person? Olivia lays in bed in her Parisian finishing school, listening intently into the wee hours of the night for the steps of Mademoiselle Julie, hoping she will stop outside her doorway. 

Olivia, a teenager finding love. Beginning adulthood, making her way through the complicated course of love. Trying to understand what her desires toward her teacher and mentor means.


"I remember that I felt as if my whole frame had been turned to water…she was coming-tonight-in a few hours---A paean sang in my heart. Had I been weak before? Now, exhilaration flowed through my veins. Why? Why? I didn't stop to think why. I only knew that there, in the immediate future, soon, soon, something was coming to me, some wild delight, some fierce anguish that my whole being called for."

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The sons and daughters of Sir Richard Strachey and Lady Strachey. 
Dorothy is the second from the left.

Olivia was written in 1949 by 'Olivia', the pseudonym of Dorothy Strachey. Dorothy was educated at the Marie Souvestre (1830–1905) girls' school at Les Ruches, Fontainebleau, France. She was later a teacher with Souvestre, and one of her pupils was Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1951, the novel was filmed as Olivia, with the lesbian elements toned down, in France by Jacqueline Audry.


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"Good Girl Art" and Lesbian Pulp

Appointment in Paris by Fay Adams
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What is "Good Girl Art"?
Usually shortened to GGA, this popular type of vintage cover art depicts an attractive sexy woman often regardless of the subject matter. GGA is not about a 'good girl' but rather means 'girl art' that is good.

Collectors use the term GGA to describe this type of lush provocative art frequently featured in comic books, crime fiction mags and pulp fiction of the 1940s and 50s.

Spring Fire is for sale at www.lavenderpulp.com

For sale at www.lavenderpulp.com
Artwork by RA Maguire

Pulp artist Robert Maguire, known for his magnificent depictions of the "femme fatale" created over 700 dramatic cover illustrations including the artwork for lesbian pulp novel "Olivia".

"Olivia" a sensitive tale of budding first love. A young teenage girl's attraction to an older woman of sophistication, Mademoiselle Julie.

"Dames, Dolls, and Gun Molls" by Jim Silke is a book on the artwork of RA Maguire. (1921-2005)

Artwork by RA Maguire

Artwork by RA Maguire

The Golden Age of Lesbian Pulp

The publication of "Women's Barracks" in 1950 brought forth "The Golden Age of Lesbian Pulp". Barbara Grier coined the phrase to describe a decade in which Lesbian Pulp paperbacks flourished and were printed by the millions.

In the restrictive 1950s these books were often a lifeline for women (and men) who otherwise had no connection to a lgbt community. Recently, a 68 year old man told me he read them all when he was 16 pretending that the characters were all male because at that time there really wasn't a male version of these books.


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Purchase these 1950s lesbian pulp fiction novels
and queer novel Gift Sets
at www.lavenderpulp.com

After reading "The Girls in 3B" my friend Vanna said "you really felt the yearning, the wanting". Although many of the pulps have sexual book jacket art, the writing was usually much more suggestive than graphic.

There were morality laws to worry about back then. It's horrible to imagine but the lesbian books were expected to end tragically so as not to "encourage homosexuality".  Kudos to author Paula Christian for being the first author to break this pattern with her novel, "Edge of Twilight" which had a positive ending relationship.

Remember to bookmark this page!

Purchase these 1950s lesbian pulp fiction novels 

and queer novel Gift Sets

at www.lavenderpulp.com

How the Lesbian got the Girl

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Going by these lesbian pulp book covers, I guess it is the brunette who always "gets the girl". Mmm, I am talking hollywood-style where the girl is always a blonde. And now we know who they really mean by "tall, dark and handsome".

If these illustrations were for a movie poster, the film title could be 

"Same Place. Same Time. Same Pose".

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we certainly knew how to have fun

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Come out of the Closet says 83 year old Artemis Smith

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83 year old Lesbian Pulp author Artemis Smith was at NY's Rainbow Book Fair this past Saturday. Unassuming, she told the story of how she was the first author to tell the gay community in the 1960s to hurry up and “Come out of the Closet” or get left out of the civil rights movement.

When I spoke with her she showed me copies of her newly published 'Odd Girl Restored", the unedited version of "Anne Loves Beth" (original title by author) and "Odd Girl Revisited" which includes memoirs of the early years of the 1950-60's Rainbow civil rights coalition movements.

Artemis objected to the use of 'tortured women' in the subheadline.

The Third Sex, published in 1959 when Artemis was 29 years old.

Radical Lesbians and the Gay Liberation Front

Went to the opening for the photography exhibit of Ellen Shumsky at New York's  Lesbian Herstory Archives in Park Slope. The photographer, as well as the moderator Flavia Rando and poet Fran Winant painted a vivid picture of radical lesbian feminism - preStonewall into the 70s. Got to re-appreciate how much the early activists did to make our lives so much easier today. The marches, the protests, the meetings and the 'more meetings'. These brave and determined women risked getting arrested during regular police raids. They risked their lives, their jobs and their family relationships.

Lesbian and gay bars were usually run by organized crime back then, no one else would financially invest in them, and they were the only ones with enough muscle to keep them open. Don't know if the bar owners really had much of a choice. Of course that still didn't prevent police raids.

Flavia told the story of a friday night out when she was turned away from her favorite lesbian hangout because the bar was raided the day before and they weren't going to let any women wearing 'slacks' enter the bar that night.  

Gay Liberation Front poster