Part 13 (1/2)

+ WILHELM, GALE. _Torchlight to Valhalla._ Random, 1938, pbr tct

_The Strange Path_, Lion 1953, Berkley 1958, 1959. Morgen, rootless and drifting after the death of her artist father, to whom she had been childishly close, is loved by two fine young men, but finds her happiness with a strange young girl, Toni.

Major, well known.

_We Too Are Drifting._ Triangle Books 1938-39; Modern Library 1935. pbr Lion Books 1951, Berkley 1957, 58, 59, 60. Probably the major novel of the thirties to deal with lesbians; perhaps the best of all time. In substance it deals with the boyish, but feminine Jan Morale; her struggle to escape a slightly sordid affair with Madelaine, a married woman, and to find happiness, despite family complications, with a young girl, Victoria. Told with fairness, restraint, and skill-not to mention that this is one of the dozen or so books on this entire list to display not only _some_, but _exceptional_ literary merit.

WILLIAMS, TENNESSEE. ”Something Unspoken” in _27 Wagons Full of Cotton._ New Directions, 1953. Also in Best Short Plays of 1955-56, Dodd, Mead, 1956. A play; I marked this for fco, received a protest: ”Everybody will enjoy this.” Compromise; everybody will enjoy this who likes Tennessee Williams.

WILLIAMS, WILLIAM CARLOS. _The Knife of the Times._ Dragon Press, 1932, hcr tct _Make Light of It_, Random House 1950, (m). The t.i.tle story is in DWCory, _21 Variations_.

WILLIAMS, ISABEL. _h.e.l.lcat._ Greenberg 1934, pbr Dell 1952.

Unpleasant girl who uses everyone for her own purposes includes a lesbian among her victims.

WILLINGHAM, CALDER. (pseud). _End as a Man._ Vanguard 1947, pbr Signet co. 1957, (m).

WILLIS, GEORGE. _Little Boy Blues._ Dutton, 1947. Concerns the machinations of a lesbian to achieve marriage and motherhood as a ”front”.

WILSON, ETHEL D. _Hetty Dorval._ Macmillan 1948, fco.

WINDHAM, DONALD. _The Hitchhiker._ Florence, Italy, priv. print.

(m).

_Servants with Torches._ N. Y. 1955 priv. print. (m).

_Dog Star._ Doubleday, 1950, (m).

WINSLOE, CHRISTA. _The Child Manuela._ (Trans. Agnes Scott Farrar, 1933.) Motherless Manuela, sent to a strict boarding-school because of supposed misconduct with a boy (actually she was only fascinated with his mother) falls in love with Elizabeth von Bernberg, one of the teachers. The woman's behavior is strictly correct, but her warmth of personality attracts all the love-starved, inhibited children; Manuela, exhilarated and slightly drunk at a school party, babbles of her love for the Fraulein, and is punished so severely that she throws herself from a top-floor window.

_Girl Alone._ (Trans. Agnes Scott). Farrar 1936. A girl in difficulties finds temporary refuge with a lesbian friend.

WINSTON, DAOMA. _The Golden Tramp._ pbo Beacon Books 1959. Evening waster about a woman writer trying it both ways.

WOLLER, OLGA. _Strange Conflict._ Pageant, 1955. Purple-pa.s.saged and would-be-horrifying story about a Eurasian hermaphrodite-supposedly as she is because of her mother's intercourse with demons before her birth-who inspires love and brings death to everyone she knows, male or female.

WOODFORD, JACK. _Male and Female._ Woodford Press, 1935.

_Unmoral._ Woodford Press, 1938. Both of these are evening wasters-racy stuff, not bad at all when compared with the current crop of trashy paperbacks. The ”lesbian” content, of course, is strictly for fun.

WOOD, CLEMENT. _Strange Fires._ Woodford Press, 1951. ”s.h.i.+pwreck on Lesbos” in his _Desire_, Berkeley n. d. 1958 (copyright 1950, perhaps Woodford Press?) Clement Wood is either a pen name for, or a successor to, Jack Woodford, a popular writer of racy, risque, s.e.xy books of little literary merit but relatively innocuous even for teen-agers ... the trash of the thirties and forties was a very different thing from the scv of the fifties.

WOOD, CLEMENT, and Gloria G.o.ddard. _Fair Game._ Woodford Press, 1949, pbr Beacon 1958. Evening waster about girls coming to the wicked big city, and we all know what happens to such girls in this kind of book. One of them falls in with the dangerous women instead of the dangerous men.

+ WOOLF, VIRGINIA. _Orlando._ _To The Lighthouse._

_Mrs. Dalloway._ All of these are cla.s.sics easily available in small, medium and large libraries, college bookstores, and the like. The lesbian content is vague and subtle, but good; one of the best woman writers.