Twilight Girl (Electronic book text)

Includes an Afterword on the history of pulp paperbacks Digitized from rare pulp edition Grier Rating: A**From the back cover... Here is the story not of the older, harder type of twilight woman, but of an innocent highschool girl, Lorraine Harris. She is first led into perverse practices by Violet, a pretty blonde carhop. Then, Lorraine is pulled ever more deeply into tainted love by Sassy Gregg, a wealthy seeker of twisted "kicks" - and by Mavis, wonderful Mavis, who becomes Lorraine's "wife." At the last, Lorraine is the confused victim of her own contaminated passions.This controversial lesbian pulp novel has been both praised and criticized by reviewers over the years since it was first published in 1961. It is the story of an inexperienced 16-year-old, Lorraine "Lon" Harris, who is learning to make her way in the world as a lesbian. Most of the time she feels like an outsider, painfully aware that she lives in a world that doesn't understand or accept her. She fantasizes about an island world that would be populated by women only... women who would be free to love and enjoy each other. One day she meets Violet, a car hop at a local drive-in restaurant. Violet, who has had experiences with women before, immediately recognizes Lon as a butch and takes her out to an underground lesbian bar that caters to the butch/femme crowd. There, Lon meets Mavis, a black femme, and her wealthy butch lover, Sassy. Sparks fly between Mavis and Lon... and before long, they begin seeing each other on the sly. Sazzy finds out about their relationship and confronts Lon, who is head over heels in love with Mavis and willing to protect her, and their love, at all costs. About Lesbian Pulp Fiction: In the early 1950s new sub-genres of the vintage paperback pulp novel industry emerged-science fiction, juvenile delinquent, sleaze, and lesbian fiction, for instance-that would tantalize readers with gritty, realistic and lurid stories never seen before. Mysteries, thrillers and hardboiled detective pulps were already selling quite well. Publishers had come to realize, however, that sex would sell even more copies. In a competitive frenzy for readers, they tossed away their staid and straightforward cover images for alluring covers that frequently featured a sexy woman in some form of undress, along with a suggestive tag line that promised stories of sex and violence within the covers. Before long, books with these sensational covers had completely taken over the paperback racks and cash registers. To this day, the "good girl art" (GGA) cover art of these vintage paperback books are just as sought after as the books themselves were sixty years ago. With the birth of the lesbian-themed pulp novel, women who loved women would finally see themselves-their experiences and their lives-represented within the pages of a book. They finally had a literature they could call their own. For lesbians across the country, especially those living in small towns, these books provided a sense of community they never knew existed, a connection to women who experienced the same longings, feelings and fears as they did-the powerful knowledge that they were not alone. We are excited to make these classic lesbian pulp novels available in ebook format to new generations of readers.