Claire Morgan’s The Price of Salt and Other Lesbian Novels of the 50s

By Isabel Oliver (2024)

Introduction

The 1952 first edition of Claire Morgan’s The Price of Salt, presented in hardcover and published in New York, was a distinct departure from the American lesbian pulp novels of the 1950s.^[1] The 1952 edition of The Price of Salt is acutely different from the 1950’s lesbian pulp novels in terms of its book design; it does not contain the design elements, book blurbs, or plot tropes that are found in these novels. In this paper, the 1952 first edition will be analyzed in comparison to its 1953 paperback edition, as well as five lesbian pulp novels of the 1950s: Dormitory Women, The Evil Friendship, The Girls in 3-B, Halo in Brass, Women without Men, and Queer Patterns. These pulp novels all contain illustrations of women and a description of the novel on the front and back cover, unlike the 1952 edition of The Price of Salt (TPOS.) This paper will first examine the front and back covers of these five pulp novels in comparison to the 1952 edition of TPOS to determine the difference in design between the 1952 edition of TPOS, the 1953 edition of TPOS, and the five lesbian pulp novels. The paper will then explore the content of these lesbian novels, comparing the resolution of their stories and their advertised prices. This paper will also briefly discuss reviews and advertisements of TPOS from 1952. To conclude, these analyses will guide ideas for future research.

Section I: Front and Back Covers

The 1952 first edition of TPOS is presented in a turquoise cloth-bound hardcover with a black spine that features the stylized title “the price of Salt” in red, cursive lettering. The sturdy binding is wrapped in a dust jacket that displays a black and white illustration of spilled salt, with the word “SALT” in it, as if it were drawn by a finger. From top to bottom, the cover reads “CLAIRE MORGAN,” “THE PRICE OF SALT,” “A MODERN NOVEL OF TWO WOMEN.”^[2] The sketched salt spills over onto the middle of the spine of the jacket, which is the same red as the word “PRICE ” and the subtitle on the cover. At 284 pages, this twenty-two centimeter book is a substantial novel but not overly dense.^[3] These physical details, while individually of little value, unite to form a deeper comprehension of the intended audience of this novel and how this intention translated into advertisement.

Front Covers

To compare this novel to other lesbian novels of the 1950s, I will use seven lesbian pulp novels from 1950-1959. These titles are included in my sample because they are part of the Lesbian Pulp Fiction collection at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, a library that is accessible to me as a student of Duke University. I recognize that this selection of novels is not entirely comprehensive of the lesbian pulp genre of the 1950s as a whole; it is a sample. To begin, the front cover of the 1959 edition of R.V. Cassill’s Dormitory Women features the illustration of three white women: one with blonde hair, one with red hair, and one with black hair. Their cat-eyed makeup, rouged cheeks, and red lips evoke a sense of seduction. The background of the cover is black, filling up two-thirds of the page. From top to bottom, there is a small Signet Books displaying that the book costs 25 cents, the description “An explosive novel of love on a college campus” in a bright yellow font, the title, Dormitory Women, in all caps and blue lettering, the author’s name, R.V. Cassill, and a final description: “A SIGNET BOOK • COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED.”^[4] The Girls in 3-B is a lesbian novel by Valerie Taylor. The 1959 version illustrates three white women, with two of them actively removing their clothing. One has her back to the viewer and is lifting her shirt up, exposing her lower back and the top of her pink underwear peeking above her skirt. One is sitting down, pulling her nude pantyhose down her leg. The third woman stands in an unbuttoned blouse with a cigarette in her hand. The cover displays the text “VALERIE TAYLOR Author of WHISPER THEIR LOVE,” “THE GIRLS IN 3-B.” The cover does not feature a sentence description of the novel such as the 1952 edition of TPOS does.^[5]

Vin Packer’s 1958 paperback edition of The Evil Friendship depicts one brunette white woman consoling a blonde white woman. The brunette woman has one hand on the shoulder of the blonde woman and one hand on the back of the blonde woman. She embraces her, with the blonde woman’s head at the brunette woman’s chest, both of their heads hung low. They both wear cardigans with high necklines, their sleeves pushed up toward their elbows. The text, from top to bottom, reads: “By the author of THE THRILL KIDS • THE YOUNG AND VIOLENT and the fabulous SPRING FIRE,” “THE EVIL FRIENDSHIP,” “VIN PACKER’S latest study of the tragedy of forbidden love.” The women on the cover are not half-clothed as those on the cover of The Girls in 3-B. This cover explicitly mentions “love,” specifically “forbidden love.”^[6]

The 1950 edition of the lesbian mystery novel Halo in Brass features just one main woman, who like some of the women featured on these pulp novels, is white and blonde. The featured text on the front cover reads, “She expected her lover… but DEATH walked in,” “Halo in Brass,” “JOHN EVANS,” ^[7] The woman holds a cigarette between her fingers, her fingernails painted red matching the red lipstick on her lips. The figure of a person’s body draped in a heavy coat, cigarette in one hand, looms in the mirror behind the woman.^[8] The yellow, duo-tone cover of Reed Marr’s 1957 edition of Women without Men depicts a woman with a single tear falling from her eye, her red nails and lips the only pop of color about her. The bars of what appear to be a jail cell stand tall behind her. The front cover reads, from top to bottom, “Inside the walls of Kennetank where women became as beasts,” “WOMEN WITHOUT MEN,” “REED MARR.”^[9] The 1959 novel Queer Patterns by Lilyan Brock hosts the vignette of two female faces on its cover. The cover contains the text, “QUEER PATTERNS,” “A delicate theme, treated honestly and candidly,” and “Lilyan Brock.”^[10]

The front cover of the 1952 edition of TPOS is distinctly unique among these selected lesbian pulp novels. Immediately, the cover does not feature the illustration of women; it does not feature any people at all. The illustration it does feature is that of spilled salt. The illustration is in black and white, whereas the lesbian pulps are all in color. The cover does not mention other works from the author, as The Girls in 3-B and The Evil Friendship do.^[11] This dust jacket does not have the logo of the publisher, as all of the other pulps do, nor does it have the price of the book, which is information that is printed on the covers of all of the pulps except Dormitory Women and Halo in Brass.^[12]

There is one aspect of the cover that this novel has in common with the other pulps, and that is the element of the color red. Dormitory Women, The Girls in 3-B, Halo in Brass, Women without Men, and Queer Patterns all accentuate the illustrated women on their covers with red lips or red nails or both. The only pulp that does not use the color red in this way is The Evil Friendship, where the women appear to have no color on their nails or lips. The Girls in 3-B utilizes a red font for its title, as the 1952 edition of TPOS does. The front cover of TPOS also presents a subtitle as the other lesbian pulps do, naming the book “a modern novel of two women.”^[13]

Book Blurbs

The term “book blurb” will be used in this paper to describe the short description or summary of a novel that is usually displayed on the back cover of the novel itself. This paper will analyze the book blurbs of the selected novels. First, although Dormitory Women is a lesbian novel, its book blurb does not explicitly mention lesbianism. It explains that the main character “tried to bury her passionate desires within her,” but does not express that those desires are for women.^[14] The Halo in Brass book blurb describes how detective Paul Pine’s investigation leads him to a “twilight world of women without men,” where he begins to “find out too much about people who didn’t want their secrets spread around.”^[15] The description of Women without Men on the novel’s back cover does not mention romantic relations between two women.^[16] The book blurb of Queer Patterns encourages readers: “Read this book, and gain an enlightened understanding of the lost women whose strange urges produce one of the great problems of modern society.” It explains that the character Sheila “gradually became aware that she was not a normal woman.”^[17] The book blurb of The Evil Friendship is more specific in its advertising as a lesbian novel. It reads, “This is the horrifying yet fascinating novel of two teen-age girls whose unnatural love for each other led to an even greater crime – the crime of matricide.”^[18] The Girls in 3-B also clearly references lesbianism, declaring that when the character Barby “finally fell in love it was with a woman.” The book blurb also mentions “booze, marijuana and sex.”^[19]

While some of these novels are more cryptic about the lesbian content they contain, they all describe the contents of the novel on the outward-facing part of the book, the book blurb on the back cover. The 1952 TPOS does not describe any lesbian content on its front or back cover. It has no book blurb at all. The back cover of TPOS describes “Another Coward-McCann Novel” The Long Run by J. Bigelow Clark. The description characterizes The Long Run as a “male novel,” a “masculine piece of writing.” Character Bill Taggart is in love with a married woman. The novel follows his “long run,” which begins by his solving of the problem of the woman’s marriage through “an act of violence from the consequences of which there is small chance of escape.” The story is said to contain “scenes of passion and intense narrative excitement.”^[20] TPOS contains similar themes of adventure to the ones described in this novel, with Carol and Therese going on a road trip that invokes a sense of adventure and escapism. Both books also include stories of love.^[21] I suggest that, because the two books share some similar themes and The Long Run is published by the same publisher as TPOS, the publisher chose to advertise The Long Run on the back cover of TPOS because they think that people who read TPOS will also be interested in this novel. Documents on this publishing decision from Coward-McCann, Inc. preceding the publication of this edition of TPOS would be needed to draw any clear conclusions, though.

Comparison between the 1952 and the 1953 editions of The Price of Salt

A comparison between the covers of the 1952 first edition of TPOS and the 1953 paperback edition of TPOS further investigates the difference between the 1952 edition and 1950s lesbian pulps. The 1953 Bantam Books paperback edition of The Price of Salt includes an illustration of two women and a man on the front cover. A blonde white woman in a black dress stands behind a blonde white woman in a purple dress lounging on a couch. The woman in the black dress has a cigarette in one hand, with the other hand placed on the shoulder of the other woman. The man stands in the distance, with one arm reaching out towards the women. From top to bottom, the text reads: “THE NOVEL OF A LOVE SOCIETY FORBIDS,” “THE PRICE OF SALT,” “CLAIRE MORGAN,” “‘[handles] explosive material… with sincerity and good taste.’ New York Times.” The 1953 edition contains elements similar to those of the other pulp novels previously discussed: it features an illustration of two women with red nails and red lips, has red edge painting on its pages, is advertised as 25 cents on the cover, and describes the novel as having a forbidden love just as The Girls in 3-B does.^[22] It also is a similar size to the lesbian pulp novels and has smaller dimensions than the 1952 edition in terms of size and thickness.^[23] The front covers of the 1952 and 1953 editions have few similarities, only the title, author’s name, and the use of the word “love.” In addition, the 1953 edition illustrates two women and the 1952 edition describes itself as “a modern novel of two women.”^[24] The 1953 edition, like the other lesbian pulp novels, has a back cover that contains a description of the novel. It is represented as a novel that “deals with a subject until recently considered taboo.” The back cover does not mention female characters or contain any explicit references to lesbianism.^[25] Three of the lesbian pulps do not clearly describe lesbian in their back-cover descriptions; however, The Evil Friendship (1958) and The Girls in 3-B (1959) mention romance involving two women on their back covers.^[26]  These novels were published last in this sample of lesbian pulp novels and they were increasingly more candid about the lesbian content of the novel, which could be the basis for further research to determine a pattern of increasing advertising of lesbian novels as explicitly lesbian, specifically advertising through the novels’ book blurbs. Further research into the coming decades could determine if this trend of explicitly-lesbian covers was temporary or long-lasting.

Section II: Content surrounding lesbian novels: Plot Resolutions, Price, and Reviews

Plot Resolutions

Four of the lesbian pulp novels discussed in this paper have plots that involve death and murder. After a string of murders of women who had lesbian relations with other women, Halo in Brass solves the whodunnit with the murderer being a woman pretending to be a man.^[27] Queer Patterns ends in the murder of one of the two female lovers.^[28] The Evil Friendship concludes with the two teenage, female lovers being convicted of murder.^[29] With a series of deaths strung throughout, Dormity Women results in the psychological unraveling of the protagonist, concluding with her institutionalization.^[30]

TPOS, unlike the majority of the lesbian pulps discussed, provides a hopeful resolution for Carol and Therese. After breaking up and spending some time apart, they find each other at the end of the novel, and it is clear that the two will get back together. Therese finds Carol at a restaurant and thinks “it was Carol she loved and would always love… It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell.”^[31] As such, the plot and resolutions of TPOS is vastly different from four of pulps. The characters’ lives do not end in tragedy, there is no death or murder, and the two women end up together with a hopeful future at the end of the novel.^[32] These narrative choices were distinctly different from the lesbian novels of the 1950s like Queer Patterns and Halo in Brass. A much larger study of lesbian novels published before TPOS would need to be studied to determine if Claire Morgan’s novel was one of the first novels to implement this happy, hopeful resolution for its lesbian characters.^[33] From this study of pulps, it can be determined that, in 1959, there is another lesbian novel that had an outcome for its lesbian characters similar to that of TPOS. The Girls in 3-B does not incorporate murder into the plot and has a much brighter future for two of its characters compared to the other pulps of the 1950s discussed in this paper. While two of the characters in The Girls in 3-B end up in heterosexual marriages, there is hope for the relationship of characters Ilene and Barby.^[34] The two move in together, without relationships with men tying them down, and the reader is left with scenes of their contentment being together.^[35]

Price

Four of lesbian novels researched in this paper cost 25, 35, 40, or 50 cents at the time of publishing, as advertised on their front covers.^[36] The dust jacket on the 1952 edition of TPOS reveals that this hardcover cost $3.00 at the time of publishing. This is twelve times the price of the 25-cent novels such as Dormitory Women and Women without Men. The 1952 hardcover of TPOS evidently cost considerably more than any of the 1950s lesbian novels discussed in this paper, but more research is needed to conclude whether or not this comparison holds up to the majority of lesbian pulp of the 1950s.

Reception

There are few reviews of TPOS from 1952 that were available to me, and therefore, I will only be inspecting one article in this paper. Charles J. Rolo wrote a review of TPOS for the New York Times, and while not exactly positive, the article does give Claire Morgan some compliments.^[37] Rolo writes, “Obviously, in dealing with a theme of this sort, the novelist must handle his explosive material with care. It should be said at once that Miss Morgan writes throughout with sincerity and good taste.”^[38] A section of that quote, as previously mentioned, is publicized on the front cover of the 1953 edition of TPOS, noticeably leaving out the unflattering comments from the article, such as a description of the novel as a “somewhat disjointed accumulation of incident, too much of which is pretty unexciting as story-telling and does little to deepen insight into the characters.”^[39] A 1952 Library Journal review by Elizabeth Nichols tells readers that TPOS is “a straightforward, inoffensive story.” Nichols recommends the novel “for readers who do not find the homosexual theme unpleasant reading.” A far-more comprehensive study of reviews and advertisements of TPOS would be needed to distinguish the reception of this book, whether it was positive or negative or whether it reached the general public or mainly just lesbian readers. To address the sales of the novel in its first year, the back cover of the 1953 pulp edition of TPOS explains, “This low-priced Bantam book, complete and unabridged, is made possible by the large sale and effective promotion of the original edition, published by Coward-McCann, Inc.”^[40] The magnitude of the sales of this novel cannot be determined from the sources discussed in this paper alone.

Future Research Directions

From the research I have conducted on the 1952 and 1953 editions of Claire Morgan’s The Price of Salt and five American lesbian pulp novels of the 1950’s Dormitory Women, The Evil Friendship, The Girls in 3-B, Halo in Brass, Women without Men, and Queer Patterns, I conclude that the 1952 first edition of TPOS is categorically dissimilar to the lesbian novels of the 1950s. To determine the success of this novel, as well as which marketing strategies were used and why, sales records, location records of sales, and correspondence from Coward-McCann, Inc. should be analyzed. Hardcover lesbian novels of this era should be considered to understand the difference between this novel and other lesbian novels (not just lesbian pulp novels). This paper uses a small sample of lesbian pulp novels, but a much larger sample should be utilized to further determine the distinction of TPOS from its lesbian-novel counterparts.

Bibliography

Barr, James. Quatrefoil: A Modern Novel. New York: Greenberg, 1950.

Brock, Lilyan. Queer Patterns. New York: Beacon-Signal, 1959.

Cassill, R. V. Dormitory Women. New York: Signet Books, 1959.

Evans, John. Halo in Brass: A Paul Pine Mystery. New York: Pocket Books, 1950.

Gutterman, Lauren Jae. “‘The House on the Borderland’: Lesbian Desire, Marriage, and the Household, 1950-1979.” Journal of Social History 46, no. 1 (2012): 1–22.

Keller, Yvonne. “‘Was It Right to Love Her Brother’s Wife so Passionately?’: Lesbian Pulp Novels and U.S. Lesbian Identity, 1950–1965.” American Quarterly 57, no. 2 (2005): 385–410.

McKee, A.L. “The Price of Salt, Carol, and Queer Narrative Desire(s).” In Patricia Highsmith on Screen, edited by Wieland Schwanebeck and Douglas McFarland, 139-157.  Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Morgan, Claire. The Price of Salt. Florida: Naiad Press, 1984.

Morgan, Claire. The Price of Salt. New York: Bantam Books, 1953.

Morgan, Claire. The Price of Salt. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1952.

Packer, Vin. The Evil Friendship. Greenwich, Conn: Fawcett, 1958.

Perrin, Tom. The Aesthetics of Middlebrow Fiction: Popular US Novels, Modernism, and Form, 1945-75. New York:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Reed-Marr, P. J. Women Without Men. Greenwich, Conn: Fawcett, 1957.

Rolo, Charles J. “Carol and Therese.” The New York Times, May 18, 1952.

Taylor, Valerie. The Girls in 3-B. Greenwich, Conn: Fawcett, 1959.

Appendix

(A) Dormitory Women

(B) The Evil Friendship

(C) The Girls in 3-B

(D) Halo in Brass

(E) Women without Men

(F) Queer Patterns

(G) The Price of Salt (1952)

(H) The Price of Salt (1953)

Endnotes

^[1] Morgan, Claire. The Price of Salt. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1952.

^[2] The cover of TPOS describes the book as “A MODERN NOVEL OF TWO WOMEN.” I have found one other queer novel from the 1950s that was marketed as “modern.” James Barr’s 1950 novel, published in New York, is a story of two gay men who become lovers. The title of the novel is Quatrefoil: A Modern Novel. (Barr, James. Quatrefoil: A Modern Novel. New York: Greenberg, 1950.).

^[3] Morgan, The Price of Salt, 1952.

^[4] Cassill, R. V. Dormitory Women. New York: Signet Books, 1959.

^[5] Taylor, Valerie. The Girls in 3-B. Greenwich, Conn: Fawcett, 1959.

^[6] Packer, Vin. The Evil Friendship. Greenwich, Conn: Fawcett, 1958.

^[7] The logo of the publisher has worn off, with only “PO,” “OK,” and “709” left.

^[8] Evans, John. Halo in Brass: A Paul Pine Mystery. New York: Pocket Books, 1950.

^[9] Reed-Marr, P. J. Women Without Men. Greenwich, Conn: Fawcett, 1957.

^[10] Brock, Lilyan. Queer Patterns. New York: Beacon-Signal, 1959.

^[11] Taylor, The Girls in 3-B; Packer, The Evil Friendship.

^[12] Morgan, The Price of Salt, 1952; Cassill, Dormitory Women; Evans, Halo in Brass: A Paul Pine Mystery.

^[13] Morgan, The Price of Salt, 1952.

^[14] Cassill, Dormitory Women.

^[15] Evans, Halo in Brass: A Paul Pine Mystery.

^[16] Reed-Marr, Women Without Men.

^[17] Brock, Queer Patterns.

^[18] Packer, The Evil Friendship.

^[19] Taylor, The Girls in 3-B.

^[20] Morgan, The Price of Salt, 1952.

^[21] Morgan, The Price of Salt, 1952.

^[22] The 1953 edition of The Price of Salt is stamped with the price “$1.25” on the first page.

^[23] Morgan, Claire. The Price of Salt. New York: Bantam Books, 1953.

^[24] Morgan, The Price of Salt, 1952; Morgan, The Price of Salt, 1953.

^[25] Morgan, The Price of Salt, 1953.

^[26] Brock, Queer Patterns; Cassill, Dormitory Women; Evans, Halo in Brass: A Paul Pine Mystery; Reed-Marr, Women Without Men; Packer, The Evil Friendship; Taylor, The Girls in 3-B.

^[27] Evans, Halo in Brass: A Paul Pine Mystery, 191-210.

^[28] Brock, Queer Patterns, 145-156.

^[29] Packer, The Evil Friendship, 190.

^[30] Cassill, Dormitory Women, 81-127.

^[31] Morgan, The Price of Salt, 1952, 276.

^[32] Tom Perrin writes, “Highsmith’s readers and fellow writers saw The Price of Salt as an attempt to show how ordinary (and thus unthreatening) lesbianism could be.” (Perrin, Tom. The Aesthetics of Middlebrow Fiction: Popular US Novels, Modernism, and Form, 1945-75. (New York:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 392.)

^[33] In the afterword of her 1984 edition of The Price of Salt, author Patricia Highsmith (pen name Claire Morgan) states, “The Price of Salt in 1952 was said to be the first gay book with a happy ending,” and it was the only one of its kind “for many years” (Morgan, Claire. The Price of Salt. Florida: Naiad Press, 1984, 277; McKee, A.L. “The Price of Salt, Carol, and Queer Narrative Desire(s).” In Patricia Highsmith on Screen, edited by Wieland Schwanebeck and Douglas McFarland. (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 36.)

^[34] Lauren Jae Gutternman writes, “It is imperative that we recognize how wives, in particular, have consistently used the household and its environs to pursue lesbian desires.” (Gutterman, “‘The House on the Borderland’: Lesbian Desire, Marriage, and the Household,” 1950-1979, 4).

^[35] Taylor, The Girls in 3-B, 146-159.

^[36] Halo in Brass does not have a visible price on the edition studied in this paper.

^[37] As lesbian pulp novels of the 1950s were published “without being reviewed by the press,” this novel had the privilege of being reviewed by these newspapers primarily because it was published in hardcover (McKee, 145-146).

^[38] Rolo, Charles J. “Carol and Therese.” The New York Times, May 18, 1952.

^[39] Morgan, The Price of Salt, 1952; Rolo, “Carol and Therese.”

^[40] An estimated five hundred thousand copies were printed in the year between the first and second edition, with the second edition having sold more than one million copies. (McKee, 146.). From a historical perspective, “sales of a million during the 1950s… are considered phenomenal.” (Keller, Yvonne. “‘Was It Right to Love Her Brother’s Wife so Passionately?’: Lesbian Pulp Novels and U.S. Lesbian Identity, 1950–1965.” American Quarterly 57, no. 2 (2005): 404.)