Barbara Grier (November 4, 1933 – November 10, 2011) was an American writer and publisher. She is credited for having built the lesbian book industry. After editing The Ladder magazine, published by the lesbian civil rights group Daughters of Bilitis, she co-founded a lesbian book-publishing company Naiad Press, which achieved publicity and became the world's largest publisher of lesbian books. She built a major collection of lesbian literature, catalogued with detailed indexing of topics.
Early life
Barbara Glycine Grier was born on November 4, 1933 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her mother was Dorothy Vernon Black, a secretary, and her father was Philip Strang Grier, a doctor. Grier had two siblings, Diane and Penni Grier. Her sister Diane was also a lesbian, a fact Barbara attributed to how feminist their mother was, as well as genetics. Barbara said of Diane, “She’s just like me, except nice. I’m the evil twin.” She also had two half-siblings (William Frederick and Brewster Grier) from her father's previous marriage to Iva Schackenberger.
Her parents separated when she was 10 and divorced when she was 13 years old. Grier grew up in several midwestern US cities, spending most of her life between Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas.
Grier realized she was a lesbian at age twelve after researching the topic at the library. She told her mother that she was homosexual, and her mother replied, "No, because you're a woman, you're a lesbian. And since 12 years old is too young to make such a decision, let's wait six months before we tell the newspapers." Yet, Grier's mother was supportive. When Grier was fifteen, her mother gifted her a copy of The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall and Of Lena Geyer (1936) by Marcia Davenport. This would be the start of Grier's collection of lesbian literature. She describes her collection of lesbian-themed books as Lesbiana, a collection that was fueled by a "love affair with lesbian publishing."
Shortly after Grier graduated high school in 1951, she met Helen Bennett in a public library. They fell in love. They spent 20 years together living in Denver, Colorado while Bennett went to library school, then moving to Kansas City where both worked in public libraries. Grier referred to their partnership as a marriage.
Career
The Ladder
In 1957, Grier subscribed to The Ladder, a magazine edited by members of the Daughters of Bilitis. Grier began writing book reviews for The Ladder, using multiple pen names in her writings including Gene Damon, Marilyn Barrow, Gladys Casey, Terry Cook, Dorthy Lyle, Vern Niven, Lennox Strong, and Lee Stuart.
The Ladder was the center of Grier's life in the 1950s and 60s. Some issues were completely written by her. At this time, Grier also contributed to other gay publications like ONE and Mattachine Review. Grier worked as The Ladder'''s poetry and fiction editor from 1966 until 1968, when Grier took over editing The Ladder with the goal of expanding the magazine to include more feminist ideals. The magazine gained a more professional and sleeker layout and increased to more than 40 pages from the 25 average under previous editors and tripled in subscriptions. She described her roles in editing the magazine, "In 1968, I became editor of The Ladder, and I had to write three hundred letters a week, edit the magazine, run a staff of fifteen people spread all over the world, work a part-time job, keep house, read the books, and write my 'Lesbiana' column." Grier also removed the word "lesbian" from the front cover, after being placed there in 1963, in an attempt to reach more women.
Grier's tenure took place at a time when the Daughters of Bilitis were in conflict about the direction of the organization. DOB founders tended to encourage a more assimilationist stance for the organization and came in direct conflict from more radical separatist lesbians, including Grier. When the DOB folded in 1970, Grier, who was editing the magazine from Kansas City, planned with DOB president Rita LaPorte to take the only two copies of the subscription list from the printer and the DOB headquarters in order to keep The Ladder alive. LaPorte took both copies to the ignorance of DOB founders Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, and relocated the magazine to Reno, causing an uproar. The Ladder ran for two more years before it outgrew its finances and folded in September 1972. Said Grier about her role in the controversy, "You have to understand that none of these things were done with malice aforethought or with intention to damage. I mean I was just as much a light-eyed maniac then as I am now in terms of the mission. The mission is that the lesbians shall inherit the earth, you see."