Whisper Their Love by Valerie Taylor (All Editions)

Good, 4 stars

arsenalpulp.com : Men, Joyce thought with a cold anger rising in her. She felt a new affection for Mary Jean. She would have liked to pat her head or put her arm around her, but she was afraid of being sentimental. She felt so alive and secure herself that she was ashamed.

Joyce is eighteen, a freshman at a fashionable school for girls; suddenly all that matters to her is a woman twice her age. This beautifully written pulp novel was published as a mass market paperback in 1957 and is widely considered a historic milestone for its openly lesbian, feminist content, which shocked many readers at the time. It has been described as an ‘anti-romance novel’ for its grounding in the reality of lesbian experience.

Whisper Their Love was the first lesbian novel by Valerie Taylor, which she wrote while raising her three sons; it sold an amazing two million copies. This new edition, which brings this classic book back into print, includes an appendix of historical materials about the book and author, as well as an introduction by Barbara Grier, co-founder of the legendary lesbian publisher Naiad Press.

Theirs was the kind of love they dared not show the world. “from the original book jacket

Little Sister’s Classics is an Arsenal Pulp Press imprint dedicated to reviving lost and out-of-print gay and lesbian classic books, both fiction and nonfiction. The series is produced in conjunction with Little Sister’s Books, the heroic gay Vancouver bookstore well-known for its anticensorship efforts.

Genre: Pulp

Subjects: Erotic Fiction; Lesbian college students - Fiction; Lesbians - Fiction

Publication History

Whisper Their Love by Valerie Taylor, 1957 Gold Medal mass market paperback
Copyright Date1957
Publication Date1957
PublisherGold Medal
FormatMass Market Paperback
No. of Pages176
LanguageEnglish
NotesGold Medal k1299

A** rating in Grier
RatingGood
Whisper Their Love by Valerie Taylor, 1957 Crest Book mass market paperback
Copyright Date1957
Publication DateOctober 1957
PublisherCrest Book
FormatMass Market Paperback
No. of Pages176
LanguageEnglish
NotesCrest 187

A** rating in Grier
RatingGood
Whisper Their Love by Valerie Taylor, 1959 Spearman hardcover
Copyright Date1959
Publication Date1959
PublisherSpearman
FormatHardcover
No. of Pages203
LanguageEnglish
RatingGood
Whisper Their Love by Valerie Taylor, 2006 Arsenal Pulp Press trade paperback
ISBN1551522101
Copyright Date1957
Publication DateOctober 1, 2006
PublisherArsenal Pulp Press
FormatTrade Paperback
No. of Pages260
LanguageEnglish
Notes1957 Fawcett publishes her first lesbian novel, Whisper Their Love, in paperback.

A** rating in Grier
RatingGood