Book dossier

Women's barracks

by Tereska Torrès, Judith Mayne

This novel—based on the author's real-life experiences—is credited as the first candidly lesbian novel, originally published in 1950, that “scandalized mid-century America” (The New York Times). As the Blitz rains down over London, taboos are broken, affairs start and stop, and hearts are won and lost. This account of life among female Free French soldiers in a London barracks during World War II sold four million copies in the United States alone and many more worldwide. Women’s Barracks was banned for obscenity in several states and denounced by the House Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials in 1952 as an example of how the paperback industry was “promoting moral degeneracy.” In spite of such efforts—or perhaps, in part, because of them—the novel became a record-breaking bestseller and inspired a whole new genre: lesbian pulp. Femmes Fatales restores to print the best of women’s writing in the classic pulp genres of the mid-20th century. From mystery to hard-boiled noir to taboo lesbian romance, these rediscovered queens of pulp offer subversive perspectives on a turbulent era.