Both, of these books hint at lesbianism on the cover blurbs, but are, rather, highly risque French novels with brief, irrelevant and heterosexually oriented contact between women characters strictly for voyeuristic effect.
CARPENTER, EDWARD. Iolaus; an Anthology of Friendship. N. Y., Albert & Charles Boni, 1935, (m). Listed as “the first of its kind” this is said also to be “very vague and old-fashioned.”
+ CASAL, MARY. The Stone Wall. An Autobiography. Chicago, Eyncourt, Press, 1930. In casual, conversational and entirely frank form, a woman born in 1865 (and therefore, at the time of writing, in her sixties) tells the story of her entire life as a lesbian. With the exception of “slightly autobiographical”—and always greatly disguised—fiction, this is probably the earliest such memoir in the literature. The writing is highly competent and professional, (subtly denying the author’s insistence that she was not a writer;) and filled with most interesting revelations about the lesbian world of New York and Paris at the turn of this century. Unfortunately the book is rare and expensive, but it stands alone as a classic of its kind.
CHAMALES, TOM T. Go Naked in the World. N. Y. Scribners 1959. Nick Stratton, wounded veteran, returns to find that his girl friend is a call-girl and a lesbian.
CHANDLER, RAYMOND. The Big Sleep. Knopf 1939, pbr Pocket Books 1950, and others. (m) The bizarre murder of a homosexual hoodlum, and the interrogation of his boy friend, form important sequences in this hard-boiled murder mystery.
CHEEVER, JOHN. “Clancy in the Tower of Babel”, ss in The Enormous Radio, Funk 1953, pbr Berkley 1958, (m).
+ CHRISTIAN, PAULA. The Edge of Twilight. pbo Crest 1959. Airline stewardess Val, in an alcoholic haze, allows herself to make love to a young girl friend, Toni. Fearing her own response to this “abnormal” love, she redoubles her promiscuous sleeping-around, but the girls end up together. The treatment, though sensational, is honest and constructive; the book will win no literary prizes, but whatever the reader’s sympathies and prejudices, he will approve the stand that happy adjustment to love and affection—even homosexual—is a more constructive solution than promiscuity. Very good of its kind.
CHRISTIE, AGATHA. A Murder is Announced. Dodd, Mead 1950, fco. Suspects include a pair of problematical lesbians.
CLARK, DORENE. The Exotic Affair. Magnet Books, 1959, scv. “I really think this one should be Maggot Books,” wrote my reviewer. “One of those fastmoving sloppy jobs where two men and two women on an exotic cruise complete with mis-spelled and misapplied foreign phrases spend most of their time trying all of the printable and some of the unprintable variations on an old old theme. All sex and no sentiment makes Jack and Jill sickening (and the reviewer sick) or, for that matter, Jack and Jack or Jill and Jill.”