Variant Women in Literature

SEX VARIANT WOMEN IN LITERATURE

A Historical and Quantitative Survey by Jeannette H. Foster, Ph.D. Vantage Press, New York

412 pp: Bibliography: Index ($5.00)

It is not a pleasant commentary on the state of American critical writings when a book of the scope of Jeannette Foster's SEX VARIANT WOMEN IN LITERATURE must be published by a vanity-publishing outfit. This is no whole sale indictment of the vanity press in itself, or of those writers who can find no other audience for their writings, but rather a criticism of the trade publishers who can find no room on their lists for a book of intrinsic worth and limited interest. It is this reviewer's personal opinion, however, that Miss Foster would have done better to keep her manuscript unpublished until it could find a commerci al publisher. Books issued by the vanity publishers are seldom given serious attention by reviewers and critics...for the very excellent reason that so much of the vanity-published material is rubbish. In this day and age, when any inept scribbler, talentless and aspiring, can have his or her vapid babblings committed to print simply by paying the printer, those who seriously publish their own serious works must of ne cessity be tarred with the same brush as the wealthy old maid who pays to have her sentimental meanderings given the quasi-respectability of printer's ink.

But with this handicap, Jeannette Foster's SEX VARIANT WOMEN IN LITERATURE is a very worthwhile book. Its scope is that of a careful and complete examination of all the literature of the Lesbian, from antiquity to the present, under the thesis that the literature of any specific day reflects the thinking of that day. day. Therefore this study of fictional Lesbians reflects quite accurately the attitudes of society toward the Lesbian herself.

Miss Foster makes little effort at psychological analysis of the material she has included. She does, however,

give the title s, descriptions and fairly complete summaries,

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