I was researching Love Like A Shadow by Lois Lodge, and have found very little on the book. It was published by Phoenix Press in 1935. Barbara Grier rated it A** and appears in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Checklist, where it is described as “Purple-passaged novel of a lesbian seeking true love.”
Okay, cool. I need to add it to the big list of lesbian books, which is being updated during this COVID-19 downtime. Fire up the old internet, and search. Hmmm.
The Library of Congress reports it has a copy as early as 1936, but the LOC is not working right now. I can see from the Catalog of Copyright Entries: Books, Part 1, that the book is 249 pages long.
Rental Library
One interesting little piece that came up was a newspaper advertisement for a rental library. The general store operating out of the Gebhart Gushard building in Decatur, Illinois, appears to have had a rental library. You could rent books for just 3¢ a day, including this title, Love Like a Shadow.
The advertisement indicates you can rent Floyd C. Douglas’s book, The Green Light (it’s actually Lloyd Douglas), a faith-based book of guidance. Or perhaps you would like to rent Beauty from Ashes by prolific author Grace Livingston Hill. I’m not being sarcastic here, she wrote more than 100 books. Many of those books, like Beauty from Ashes, indicates a strong religious faith.
Then we have Anita Blackmon (incorrectly shown in the advertisement as Blackman), and her novel, Her Private Devil. Now we’re talking! The book details the unhappy life of a southern small-town girl who gives into her overpowering sexual desires. Now, now, this was written in 1934, and was Blackmon’s first novel. It’s hardly explicit, hard core stuff. But, we are getting closer and closer to THE. LESBIAN. NOVEL.
That’s right. Hidden in the list is Lois Lodge’s Love Like a Shadow. You could rent this lesbian literature for just pennies a day.
Suppression of Vice
The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice was an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public in New York. Founded in 1873 by men associated with the YMCA (oh! the irony!), it was granted powers of search, seizure and arrest. The Society focused largely on literature. Why? Probably because they got 50% of the fines levied. In 1947, the group’s name was changed to the Society to Maintain Public Decency, before finally dissolving in 1950.
Novel Declared Indecent
Which all leads me to the newspaper clipping above. A bookstore in New York sold a copy of Love Like a Shadow to at least one member of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. And the publisher was fined a whopping $500, of which the society got half. That’s more than $9,300 at 2020 rates. Here’s the text of the news article, even though they misidentify the book in the title:
NEW YORK – May 25 [1935] – “Love Like a Shadow,” a novel by Lois Lodge, has been declared indecent and a $500 fine with the alternative of a three-month prison sentence imposed on its publisher, it was disclosed today.
Justices of the court of special sessions acted in the case of Emanuel Wartels, associated with the Phoenix Press. Wartels said he would appeal.
He was arrested after sales were made to investigators for the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.
And while all this is interesting (really, not being sarcastic here, I really do find it interesting), I can’t actually locate a copy of the book. I’m looking for the cover of Lodge’s Love Like a Shadow, and can’t find it. And I can find little on the book itself.
The Bard
Yep, I have to involve Shakespeare. It isn’t my choice, it’s simply a requirement. Did Lodge get her title from a Shakespearean quote? The Merry Wives of Windsor, ACT II, SCENE 2 (emphasis mine):
I have long loved her, and, I protest to you, bestowed
much on her; followed her with a doting observance;
engrossed opportunities to meet her; fee’d every slight occasion
that could but nyggardly1 give me sight of her; not
only bought many presents to give her, but have given
largely to many to know what she would have given;
briefly, I have pursued her as love hath pursued me; which
hath been on the wing of all occasions. But whatsoever I
have merited, either in my mind or in my means, meed, I
am sure, I have received none, unless experience be a jewel;
that I have purchased at an infinite rate, and that hath
taught me to say this,
Love like a shadow flies when substance love pursues;
Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.
And with that, I have now tied in a relatively unknown lesbian novel from 1935 with rental libraries, undercover vice crusades and Shakespeare.
Who says researching lesbian literature is boring?!
1 This is the 1384 Wycliffe Bible spelling, meaning grudgingly. (… every slight occasion that could but grudgingly give me sight of her…)
