Each series has an easily recognizable cover design, plot formula, and particular sexual theme, such as “men in uniform.” Star Distributor perhaps represents the extreme of specialty marketing its various series include Gay Incest, Young Studs, Buddy Books (high school settings), and Jock Studs. In the 1960s, various series emerged, including HIS 69, Pleasure Reader, Blueboy Library, and the Surree Stud Series. The early pulps, with their lurid covers and titillating blurbs, demonstrate a fascination with “deviant” sexuality. The earliest materials are sensationalistic pulp novels dating primarily from the 1950s. The Gay Men’s Popular Fiction Collection built from the Martin and Fisher donations includes representatives from over 130 series and more loosely conceived publishers’ lines.
Many of the novels openly appeal to a heterosexual reader, and a significant portion were written by men (or possibly under male pseudonyms). Indeed, the intended audience is itself an interesting question. The impact of these books on their audiences remains to be examined. Numerous covers show brunettes as the confident seductresses and blondes as the confused but tempted women struggling with their sexual identity. With titles like Women in the Shadows, Of Shame and Joy, The Unmarried Ones, The Fourth Sex, and The Third Way, these novels often portray the secretive and dangerous lives of lesbians who have found their way to the bar scene in big cities in search of others like themselves. A number of these novels belong to series, such as Midwood, which also include gay men’s pulps. The Lesbian Popular Fiction Collection contains approximately one hundred pulp novels, primarily from the 1950s and 1960s. George Fisher’s gift contributes significantly to Cornell’s overall holdings in the history of sexuality, and in particular, to its collection of lesbian and gay paperback novels. In operation for two decades, Elysian Fields had become the country’s largest dealer in rare and out-of-print books relating to sexuality. In 1991, the estate of George Fisher donated the entire inventory of his Elysian Fields Booksellers business in New York City. Gordon Martin, a retired librarian who had been building a personal collection of such paperbacks for years, donated some 1700 volumes in 1989. As a result of two major donations to the Human Sexuality Collection, Cornell now holds a major collection of gay men’s pulp novels and series fiction and has the beginnings of a collection of lesbian pulp novels dating from the 1950s.