Items

• Men in erotic art
  This is a catalogue of artists represented by the Rob Gallery, based in Amsterdam and later also in New York, which exhibited male erotic art. Rob started as a leather worker catering for men, and the themes of leather and S&M continued in the art represented by the gallery. The catalogue is an introduction to this work and the artists, including Tom of Finland (Touko Laaksonen), Nigel Kent (aka James D.), Olaf and Orsen. The catalogue also introduces the Art Matchboxes series, limited edition matchboxes containing erotic prints by a single artist.
• Mr. Benson
  First published in 1983 by San Francisco-based publishers Alternate, John Preston’s classic S/M novel details a young man’s slave/master relationship with the sadistic and dominant Mr Benson. Preston (1945-1994) was involved in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s, as well as in gay activism. By 1975, he was editor of national gay newspaper, ‘The Advocate’. In the 1980s, he combined his writing of erotica and pornography with more mainstream anthologies about gay life. In 1995, he posthumously received a Lambda Literary Award and was a finalist for the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Award for 'Sister and Brother’, a nonfiction anthology co-edited with Joan Nestle. In 1994, the year of his death from complications from AIDS, he received the Steve Maidhof Award from the National Leather Association International, who inaugurated a short story prize in his name in 2007.
• S and M : studies in sadomasochism
  This anthology is part of a series entitled ‘New Concepts in Human Sexuality’ which was edited by Vern L. Bullough (1928-2006), a sexologist, historian and sociologist. The two editors of this volume, sociology professor Thomas Weinberg (1943-) and scholar and public health worker G.W. Levi Kamel (1947-1989), approach sadomasochism from a sociological rather than a psychopathological perspective although the book begins with acknowledgement of that traditional view in a chapter focussing on Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis. Most of the work considers the social behaviour of those involved with sadomasochism – gay and straight – via exploration of identity, interaction and organization. The book is published by Prometheus Books which was founded in 1969 by secular humanist and academic Paul Kurtz.
• S-M : the last taboo
  The appearance of this book is reminiscent of a 1950s pulp novel, with its paperback cover and cheap, browning paper. It was published by Grove Press, a predominantly literary publisher of writers including John Rechy and Michael Rumaker, under their Evergreen Black Cat Book imprint. The authors are, presumably, a married couple, although there is very little information about them. It is also unclear whether the couple were involved in sadomasochism (which they prefer to term “s-m”) or distant researchers of it. At one point, in a section on purchasing s-m materials, they use the word “we”. The book aims to describe the “psychology, techniques, and accessories” of s-m. The final section, ‘From the Fields of Infamy’, presents literary examples of s-m, including by Charles Baudelaire and Pauline Réage.
• The rose exterminator : a novel
  This gay sado-masochistic mystery novel was the third and final work of fiction by William Carney (1922-1987), after ‘The Real Thing’ (1968) and ‘A Year in a Closet’ (1974). If it seems a niche subgenre, it was one Carney carved out for himself successfully, alongside employment as a university teacher of French – ‘The Real Thing’ was influenced by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s eighteenth-century epistolary novel ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’ – and as a restorer of Victorian and Edwardian houses. As well as being a guide to the S/M lifestyle and the first generation of West Coast ‘leathermen’, Carney’s books provide an insight into late 1960s and 1970s gay life in San Francisco more generally. Carney’s papers are now held at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
• The story of Harold
  Underground classic ‘The Story of Harold’ was written under the pseudonym Terry Andrews by acclaimed children’s author George Selden (1929-1989), best-known for ‘The Cricket in Times Square’, winner of a Newbery Honor in 1961. It describes the mostly doomed, often sadomasochistic affairs of a bisexual children’s author named Terry Andrews – whose children’s book, ‘The Story of Harold’, is wildly popular – but who is otherwise on the verge of emotional and physical breakdown. Andrews finds healing by re-working incidents in his own life through stories about his character, Harold, which he relates to the young sons of his friend and lover. The novel is illustrated with several full-page pen-and-ink drawings by Edward Gorey, known for ‘The Gashlycrumb Tinies’ and ‘The Doubtful Guest’ among other works.