Early Gender-Bending Novel "Miss High Heels", with Themes of Cross-Dressing and Gender Transformation, First US Edition

Anonymous

First Edition

[LGBTQ][Transgender][Cross-Dressing] Anonymous. Miss High-heels. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1969. First U.S. edition. Octavo. Lime green cloth boards in original photo-illustrated dust jacket. First published anonymously in Paris in 1931, Miss High-heels is an infamous work of fetishistic and feminization-themed erotica, presented here in its first U.S. printing by Grove Press, known for its defiance of censorship and promotion of transgressive literature. The novel tells the story of Dennis Evelyn Beryl, a young, effeminate English aristocrat who, under the coercive influence of his domineering step-sister Helen, is gradually transformed into “Denise,” the titular Miss High-heels.

Framed as a fictional memoir penned at Helen’s command, the narrative follows Dennis’s journey from privileged heir to submissive cross-dresser. He is forced into girls’ school, stripped of masculine identifiers, and eventually returned to the family estate clothed in “diamond-buckled satin slippers” and “the finest silks and satins,” fully assuming the role of a “fetichiste-du-pied.” Themes of humiliation and gender inversion mark the main character's transition as a fetish story, but the book also allows for them to feel comfortable in their new identity: “Eventually Dennis is brought to realize how much more pleasurable is his life as a young girl, and he willingly abandons his name, fortune, and life to the whims of Helen.” Notable both for its elaborate prose and for its early depiction of forced feminization fantasy, Miss High-heels occupies a space between pornography and proto-trans literature which would later flourish in small press chapbook format in the 80s and 90s. While drenched in the misogynistic and sadomasochistic tropes of its genre, the text is nevertheless of interest among scholars of queer publishing history. Binding tight and square; boards clean; jacket bright with light shelfwear and a single 1/2 in closed tear at the top margin of front panel. Overall near fine in very good dust jacket. A historically resonant text in trans and fetish literature.

Item #22994

Price: $380.00