SWINBURNE, ALGERNON. _Lesbia Brandon._ Falcon Press 1952, edited and annotated by Randolph Hughes. A famous incomplete novel by the well-known poet, for students rather than readers. Really only a handful of scattered chapters, too scrappy to judge; see also poetry supplement.
SYDNEY, GALE. _Strange Circle._ Beacon Books pbo 1959, 1960. Grace Garney, feeling unwanted, gets a job with Mrs. Flocke, a repulsive lesbian, and repels a pass; this, however, revives childhood memories, and during a rift in her affairs with a man, she has a brief affair with Inez, a friend with an unsatisfactory husband. Evening waster.
SYKES, GERALD. _The Center of the Stage._ N. Y., Farrar 1952, pbr Signet 1954. Witty novel of the theatre, with a minor lesbian character.
TAYLOR, DYSON. _Bitter Love._ orig. copyright 1952, Pyramid 1958, (m). Worldly woman marries a homosexual who wants her for a “front”.
TAYLOR, JOHN. _Shadows of Shame._ Pyramid 1956, 1959, (m).
TAYLOR, VALERIE. _Whisper Their Love._ Crest pbo 1957. Unsympathetic college novel of a girl suffering through a lesbian affair while all around her the other girls suffer through rape, incest and abortion. Over-written.
_Girls in 3-B._ Crest pbo 1959. One of three young girls who come to the city to find jobs or careers, Barby drifts into a lesbian relationship, mostly out of revulsion against two unfortunate experiences with men. Excellent, sympathetic.
+ _Stranger on Lesbos._ Crest pbo 1959. A married woman with a grown son and indifferent husband, returning to college for work on a college degree, is ripe for an affair with “Bake”, a confirmed lesbian. The affair is told with sufficient skill and restraint to make it believable; even Frankie’s eventual return to her old life is not a cliche “happy ending” but well prepared and well characterized. Remarkably good; the degree of progress from the first to the third of these novels makes your editors anxious to see where Miss Taylor goes from here.
TELLIER, ANDRÉ. _Twilight Men._ Greenberg 1931, pbr Lion 1950, 52, 56, Pyramid 1959, (m). Well known.
+ TEY, JOSEPHINE. (pseud. of Elizabeth MacKintosh.) _Miss Pym Disposes._ Macmillan 1948; also in _Three by Tey_, Macmillan 1954. Slowly built-up, excellently constructed mystery of a girl’s school, where a close attachment between two seniors provides solution and motivation for a murder. The level of mystification is so high that even on the last page the reader is gasping with the final, shocking surprise.