It was Thayer's own liminal position, existing between the heterosexual and homosexual communities, that made her such a perceptive commentator about the difficulties of pursuing a lesbian lifestyle in the 1950s.

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Thayer began to lead a double life at an early age. She was conventionally married yet slipped away on the weekends to experience the gay night life of Greenwich Village. Valuing her privacy and not wishing to be connected with lesbian pulps, she dropped from sight after her books were published. Only in 1980, when her books were republished by Naiad Press, did she acknowledge authorship.

Although written last, Beebo Brinker (1962), is actually the first novel in Bannon's sequence, chronologically. The novel introduces young Beebo, fresh from the Midwest, who comes out as a lesbian in the Greenwich Village gay culture. Beebo, the stereotypical butch, is a central figure in Bannon's other novels, as well. Apart from its depiction of Beebo, this novel is also notable for its accurate account of the social pressures that confronted lesbians in this period.

Odd Girl Out (1957) centers on the growth of a lesbian relationship between two college students. Shy, sheltered Laura is at first horrified to discover her feelings toward Beth since she assumes that lesbians are "great strong creatures in slacks with brush cuts and deep voices." Here, Bannon uses her fiction to explode lesbian stereotypes.

By the end of the story, Laura accepts her lesbianism, but Beth flees into the safety of marriage to a man. Such a conclusion seems at first glance to endorse the benefits of heterosexual marriage, but for Bannon, denying one's lesbianism can lead only to dissatisfaction, and the marriage fails.

I Am a Woman (1959) revolves around Laura's attempt to establish her lesbian identity and find love after she has left college. Bannon is particularly good at portraying how Laura manages to move from a heterosexual environment, such as the office where she works, to the lesbian bars where she meets Beebo. Despite the novel's rather pat conclusion--the two women kiss and declare their love--I Am a Woman provides a sensitive study of the Greenwich Village homosexual community of the late 1950s.

The bleakest of Bannon's novels is Woman in the Shadows (1959). Beebo, now an alcoholic, antagonizes Laura and they have fights, often ending in physical confrontations. To escape her embattled relationship with Beebo, Laura has an affair, but it ends bitterly. At the book's conclusion, Laura has left Beebo and, rather implausibly, has married Jack, a gay man, and become artificially inseminated.

Journey to a Woman (1960) recounts Beth's story of fleeing her unhappy marriage in order to search for Laura. Even though Beth leaves her husband and children, Bannon portrays this not as negative, but as necessary in order for Beth to find her true identity. Although at the end of the novel, Beth has found happiness with Beebo, her new lover, other lesbians are not as fortunate. Vega, for instance, rejects her lesbianism, which drives her to insanity. In this fashion, Bannon reverses the then common assumption that lesbianism itself was a form of insanity.

As do all of her novels, Journey to a Woman criticizes how heterosexual society views homosexuality, a pertinent reason for still studying Bannon's texts. Bannon's novels, as well as other lesbian pulps, provide an important record of lesbian life in a period when few women dared speak about homosexuality.

American lesbian literature prior to Stonewall exploited the "outlaw" status of the lesbian as it moved from encrypted strategies of expression to overt political celebrations of woman-for-woman passion.

It is impossible to understand twentieth-century lesbian literature without recognizing the significance of butch-femme relationships.

The centrality of gay and lesbian bars to glbtq culture has been reduced in recent years, but they continue to fulfill important functions; and, in many areas, they remain the most visible manifestation of glbtq presence.

The glbtq history of Los Angeles, the U.S.'s second largest metropolis, is replete with cultural, social, and political firsts.

From the great modernist writers of the 1920s and 1930s to the pulp writers of the 1950s to the lesbian writers of today, lesbian novelists have had a powerful impact on the lesbian community.

Despite the stereotyping of their cover art and their pathologizing of lesbianism, the American pulp novels of the 1950s and 1960s subverted the social and political prohibitions against homosexual expression during the McCarthy era.

Appealing to glbtq people who enjoy romantic fantasy, the queer romance novel has recently come into its own.