Mass-Market Paperbacks on Queer and Trans Identities Across Psychological and Pulp Genres, 1957–1977

Havelock Ellis June Singer

Ephemera and pamphlets

[LGBTQ][Cross-dressing][Transgender] Five queer and trans themed pulp books and one periodical issue published between 1957 and 1977, tracking shifting American understandings of homosexuality, cross-dressing, and transgender identity during the decades between Cold War repression and the emergence of gay and trans liberation movements. Produced in the era of the Lavender Scare through the early post-Stonewall period, these publications collectively illustrate how queer and trans lives were sensationalized, pathologized, and even tentatively validated in mass-market print. The archive offers a cross-section of popular sexology, exploitative fiction, autobiographical trans narrative, and medical case study, making it valuable for research into LGBTQ history, popular culture, and sexual discourse. Archive include five items. Various publishers. 1957–1977.

[1] Ellis, Havelock. On Life and Sex: Two Complete Books. New York: New American Library, 1957. First printing. Mass-market reissue of Little Essays of Love and Virtue and More Essays of Love and Virtue, bringing Ellis’s early twentieth-century sexological writings on homosexuality, autoeroticism, and gender variance to a Cold War paperback audience, framed for general readership as foundational challenges to repressive sexual norms.

[2] Hitt, Orrie. Male Lover. New York: Gaslight Books, 1964. First edition. Sensational pulp novel centered on a closeted male athlete whose same-sex desire unfolds within a framework of erotic tragedy; includes depiction of a character described as “half-and-half female,” reflecting exploitative yet visible mid-century representations of gender nonconformity.

[3] Lafayette, Richard/Rachel. The Transexual. Canoga Park, CA: Viceroy Books, 1968. First edition. Subtitled “The true story of a man turned woman!” and presented as a translated autobiographical narrative, this paperback represents an early English-language publication purporting to center a transgender woman’s life story for an American readership during the formative years of public discussion surrounding gender reassignment.

[4] Singer, June. Androgyny: Toward a New Theory of Sexuality. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976 (Anchor Books edition, 1977). First mass-market paperback edition. Jungian-inflected study proposing integration of masculine and feminine archetypes as essential to psychological wholeness, situating gender fluidity within spiritual and symbolic discourse during the height of 1970s feminist and human potential movements.

[5] Sexology. Vol. 34, No. 9. New York: Sexology Corp., April 1968. Issue includes “Do ‘Sex-Change’ Men Want to Be Mothers?” by Dr. John Money and Dr. Clay Primrose, reporting on early transgender case studies at Johns Hopkins Hospital, alongside popularized sex education features; reflects the period’s clinical framing of gender transition amid growing public fascination.

Together, these publications trace the evolution of trans and queer representation in the pulp genre across three decades: from Ellis’s sexology circulating in paperback form during the 1950s, to 1960s pulp fiction exploiting queer tropes, to transgender case studies entering mainstream magazines, and finally to 1970s theoretical reframings of androgyny aligned with the second wave feminist movement. The juxtaposition of exploitative marketing language with emerging self-narration and theoretical revaluation underscores the changing nature of mid-century attitudes toward human sexuality. General shelf wear, rubbing to covers, and age toning consistent with mass-market paperbacks; periodical with light handling wear. Overall good to very good condition. An archive of publications demonstrating the mid-century terrain of queer and transgender representation in American print before and after Stonewall.

Item #22650

Price: $2,800.00