Obscenity, Literary Censorship, and Queer British Fiction
Bloomsbury Academic (Verlag)
978-1-350-55179-4 (ISBN)
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In a largely intolerant climate, post-Second World War British publishers issued hundreds of works of fiction featuring queer characters or plotlines; but, against a backdrop of notions of discretion and laws prohibiting homosexuality, both the books and the texts were ‘toned down’. Exploring how these products were sites of containment and resistance, and representations of disrupted social, political, and economic conditions of the time, The Publishing Closet calls for us to re-examine and re-define our understandings off mid-century queer fiction and literary culture. With close readings, case studies and analysis of elements such as dust jackets alongside new evidence from the archives of publishing businesses, authors, literary agents, and editors, Christopher Adams covers works by Denton Welch, Francis King, Mary Renault, Martyn Goff and Gore Vidal and events including the accusations of censorship against the retailer W. H. Smith and the obscenity trial of Radcylffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. Casting fresh light on queer literary history by mapping the confines of the ‘publishing closet’, this book demonstrates that in viewing queer fiction as book objects we might more fully understand them as products of constricting and competing social, legal, and economic forces that cohered around mid-century conceptions of the queer.
Christopher Adams is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Southampton, UK. He completed his doctoral work at the Institute of English Studies, University of London. He also works as a playwright and screenwriter.
Introduction
Why Books? Why Fiction?
What Is the Publishing Closet?
1. ‘We would soon tone them down!’: Denton Welch and Writing the Queer Manuscript
Denton Welch and The Homoerotics of Adolescence
Maiden Voyage (1943)
In Youth Is Pleasure (1945)
2. ‘It did get a reputation … of being a “queer” book’: John Guest and Editing the Queer Manuscript
Francis King and The Dividing Stream (1951)
Mary Renault and The Last of the Wine (1956)
Francis King and The Man on the Rock (1957)
John Guest as Queer Editor
3. ‘Can you make it rather more of a He and She picture?’: Designing and Blurbing the Queer Dust-Jacket
Text and Image
Blurbs
Illustration
Mary Renault and the Queer Dust-Jacket
The Charioteer (1953)
The Last of the Wine (1956)
4. ‘Conditioned somewhat by what we can sell’: Martyn Goff, Putnam, and Marketing the Homosexual Novel
The Homosexual Novel and Postwar Queer Consumerism
Martyn Goff and Marketing the Homosexual Novel
The Plaster Fabric (1957)
The Youngest Director (1961)
5. ‘Upholders of Middle-Class Morality’ and ‘Purveyors of Greeting Cards’: W.H. Smith and Distributing Queer Books
W.H. Smith and the Legal Position of Libel and Obscenity Pre-1959
W.H. Smith and the Obscene Publications Act (1959)
W.H. Smith, Obscenity, and Homosexuality in the 1960s
Gore Vidal, Myra Breckinridge, and W.H. Smith
W.H. Smith and Action Plan D2
6. ‘The business of sisterhood’: Publishing the Lesbian Novel
Lesbianism as Obscenity: The Well of Loneliness (1928) Trial and its Consequences
A Publishing History of the Lesbian Novel, 1940s-1960s
Queer Women’s Representation in Genre Fiction in the 1940s
The (Re-)Emergence of the Lesbian Novel in the 1950s
The Lesbian Novel in the 1960s
Queer Women and the Economics of Authorship
Queer Women Networks and the ‘business of sisterhood’
Bibliography
Index
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 23.7.2026 |
|---|---|
| Zusatzinfo | 10 bw illus |
| Verlagsort | London |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 156 x 234 mm |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Buchhandel / Bibliothekswesen | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-350-55179-1 / 1350551791 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-350-55179-4 / 9781350551794 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
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