BALZAC, HONORÉ DE. _Cousin Bette._ Classic; many standard editions and translations. The story of a neurotic spinster’s half-realised passion for a woman friend.
_The Girl with the Golden Eyes._ Many standard editions and translations, including pbr Avon Books 1957, (trans. Ernest Dowson.) Shocker of the 19th century, dealing with the passion of the Chevalier de Marsay for a strange, unspoilt girl, Paquita—who is virtually enslaved to a sinister lesbian Countess.
_Seraphita._ London, J.W. Dent & Sons, 1897; also as above. A romance of an angelic hermaphrodite. All of these are classics of world literature, as well as the literature of variance, and are apt to be available even in small libraries.
_Odd Girl Out._ pbo, Gold Medal, 1957, 1960.
_Women in the Shadows._ pbo, Gold Medal, 1959.
These three form a single, connected narrative, although any of the three novels can be read as a self-contained story. The first volume introduces the heroine of the series, Laura Landon, at college; where, in undergoing an affair with her roommate, lovely but frigid Beth, she discovers her homosexuality. Softened by the affair, Beth marries, and Laura runs away. In the second book, Laura, in Greenwich Village, is sharing an apartment, with Marcie, a divorcee, entirely “straight” who plays Laura along strictly for kicks; Laura suffers under this treatment for a long time, then runs away again to shack up with a butch-type Village character, Beebo. In the third book, Laura and Beebo have been living together for two years; Laura is tiring of this lengthy affair and cheats on Beebo with a colored dancer named Tris, while Beebo, to win Laura back, resorts to such trickery as staging a phony “rape” ... inflicting wounds on herself in search of sympathy. Tiring of this life, Laura runs away again, this, time to marry a male homosexual friend, Jack, in a search for stability and permanence. The whole story invites comparison with Weiraugh’s THE SCORPION: homosexuality per se is not attacked, but the drawbacks of the life, and the dangers and difficulties to anyone trying to adjust him-or-herself to that life, are frankly and brutally delineated; there is a pervasive air of dissatisfaction, or resignation, and gradual withdrawal; and the ending of the third book is unsatisfactory and hardly complete. Nevertheless, the impact of these books, particularly when read all together, is considerable; Miss Bannon’s grasp of character, technique and construction improve with each novel. Despite wild improbabilities and gimmicky, contrived situations, these are perhaps the major contribution to lesbian literature in the paperback field anywhere.