User:Valeree/The Lesbian in Literature

The Lesbian in Literature: A Bibliography is a survey of lesbian literature by Barbara Grier.

The book was an outgrowth of The Ladder, a lesbian literary magazine. In 1958, Marion Zimmer Bradley created booklists called Astra's Tower Special Leaflets. In 1960, Grier joined her in creating Checklist 1960, a mimeographed bibliography that was updated in 1961 and 1962. Books that were considered simply voyeuristic exploitations of lesbianism marketed for the male gaze were given the rating "svc", which stood for "Short Course in Voyeurism." Grier and Bradley described the rating:

"[If] the story is a just a peg on which to hang up a lot of poorly written, gamy erotic episodes, with no literary value, and just evasive enough to keep the printer out of jail, then we have given it short shrift with the abbreviation "scv"."

Checklist 1960 listed 35 novels as "of considerable value", the highest rating, and 38 as "svc".

In 1967 the first edition of The Lesbian in Literature, by Lee Stuart and Grier (under Grier's pseudonym Gene Damon) included approximately 3000 books. A second edition was printed in 1975 by authors Gene Damon, Jan Watson, and Robin Jordan, and a third in 1981 by Barbara Grier.