A Rare Book's Roll-Call of Dishonest, Immoral, and Unusual People

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1813, James Caulfield published a new, expanded, three-volume edition of his  Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons, From the Reign of Edward the Third, to the Revolution, containing 109 engraved plates and 292 pages of accompanying text,  finishing the work originally issued in two volumes 1794-1795 with sixty plates and 214 pages of biographical material.

Caulfield's purpose was to embellish with prints the "twelfth class" section found in James Granger's Biographical History of England, from Egbert the Great to the Revolution, consisting of Characters dispersed in different Classes (2 vols., 1769), the "twelfth class" being those ‘such as lived to a great age, deformed persons, convicts, &c.’

It is, in short, an illustrated rogue's gallery of the odd, the dubious, the notorious, the eccentric, and the disreputable including:

Mother Damnable, the epitome of ugliness and the cursing, scolding, fuming, fire-flinging shrew not to confused with Mother Louse;

 

Blash De Manfre, the human Trevi Fountain commonly called the Water Spouter, who earned fame for drinking water in large quantities and regurgitating it as various sorts of wine, simple waters, beer, oil, and milk;

Elynour Rummin, the famous Ale-Wife of England, with "nose some deal hooked, and curiously crooked, never stopping but ever dropping; her skin loose and slacke, grain'd like a sacke, with a crooked back," but whose ale was renowned as A-1;

Margaret Vergh Gryifith, who had a six-inch horn protruding from her forehead;

Mrs. Mary Davis, who one-upped Margaret Vergh Gryifith with two horns growing on her head that would shed and grow again;

Francis Battaglia, alas not known as "Frankie Batts," who would devour half a peck of stones within 24-hours and six days later excrete them as sand through a colon with true grit;

John Clavell, the gentleman highwayman who wrote elegant poetry that begged mercy from judges, nobles,  and King, and was the author of A Recantation of an ill-led Life: Or, a discovery of the Highway Law (1627);

Archibald "Archie" Armstrong, the sharp-tongued master of buffoonery while jester to James I and Charles I, who earned renown and fortune as a Jacobean wise-acre, retired and became a loan-shark, and wrote A Banquet of Jeasts. Or Change of cheare: Being a collection of moderne jests. Witty ieeres. Pleasant taunts. Merry tales (1630);

Ann Turner, "a gentlewoman that from her youth had been given over to a loose kind of life, of low stature, fair visage, for outward behavior comely, but in prodigality and excess riotous," and was executed for murder;  

 Innocent Nat Witt, a poor, harmless idiot;

Moll Cut-Purse, "a woman of a masculine spirit and make [who] practised or was instrumental to almost every crime and frolick;"

Roger Crab, the sack-cloth wearing vegan hermit;

Mary Aubrey, who murdered her abusive husband then chopped him to pieces and cast him thither and yon;

Robert Fielding, gambler, bigamist, suspected murderer, and the vainest of all fops; 

Augustine Barbara Venbek, aka Barbara Urselin, whose "whole body and even her face was covered with curled hair of yellow color and very soft like wool";

Mary Carleton, who used more aliases than any knave in the Kingdom, was married three times, robbed and cheated several people, was often taken to be a German princess or at least a woman of quality, and was tried for bigamy and acquitted;

Mull'd-Sack, b. John Cottington, the genius pickpocket and miscreant who, one night while drunk, accidentally married an hermaphrodite named Aniseed-Water Robin (credited with twice impregnating himself and giving birth to a boy and a girl) in Fleet prison, "the common place for joining all rogues and whores together"; and many more.

James Caulfield (1764–1826) was an author and printseller. "Many old English portrait prints were too rare and valuable to supply the extraordinarily large demand for them. To this end, many old plates were republished and many old prints were copied. Caulfield came to specialize in prints illustrating Granger's twelfth class of people—‘such as lived to a great age, deformed persons, convicts, &c.’—whose portraits were very often the hardest to come by. In 1788 he began his work Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters of Remarkable Persons, a series of reproductions of old portrait paintings and copies of rare old or popular prints accompanied by letterpress biographies" (Oxford DNB).

(In a bibliographical aside, Granger's book made fashionable the practice of extra-illustrating historical or topological books, i.e. pasting in illustrations from other sources, which became known as "grangerizing" existing texts).

In 1819 Caulfield further extended his book to include Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons, from the Revolution in 1688 to the end of the Reign of George II.

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CAULFIELD, James. Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons, From the Reign of Edward the Third, to the Revolution. Collected From the Most Authentic Accounts Extant. A New Edition, Completing the Twelfth Class of Granger's Biographical History of England; With Many Additional Rare Portraits. London: Printed for R.S. Kirby, 1813.

New edition, expanded and completing the original two volumes 1794-95. Three tall octavo volumes (10 x 5 7/8 in; 254 x 149 mm). viii, 104; [2], [105]-198; [2], [201]-292 pp. 109 engraved plates (one folding), including engravings based upon the drawings of Marcellus Laroon (1653-1702). Publisher's original blue paper covered boards with white printed spine labels

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Grushenka: The Story Behind A Rare Classic Erotic Book

by Stephen J. Gertz

 

It is an anonymously written erotic novel privately printed in 1933 in Dijon, France but it's not Fifty Shades of Grey Poupon.

It is “the story of a Russian serf girl compiled from contemporary documents in the Russian Police files and private archives of Russian Libraries” (title page) translated from the original Russian but it's not Serfer Girl by The Boyar Boys.

It is Grushenka - Three Times A Woman.

A promotional insert teasing the book is sometimes found in copies of this scarce volume in its first edition. It tells quite a story. It's a doozy:

"'A Russian Woman is Three Times A Woman' - Old Russian Proverb

   Announcing the arrival from Paris of the
                                     Second and Final Shipment of 150 Copies
                                                  
                                                                    of

                                           Three Times A Woman -

                                                        'Grushenka'

Publication: Published in Paris in January 1933. Printed in Dijon, France. Discovered in Russia and sponsored by a well-to-do American literary man residing in Paris.

Format: A beautiful example of modern European book making. A large book, 7x9 inches (more than 80,000 words). A type page of finest proportions and clarity. Cover completely decorated in bold modernistic mode.

Illustrations: Seven full page wash drawings in half-tone reproduction, which, in the modern manner, "bleed" off the page. The drawings are the work of a young Parisian Russian and no higher praise can be said of them than that they do justice to the text.

The Book: At last a book which answers the complaint that erotic books "are all alike." A unique contribution in that its literary qualities are of the first order, while its material and the stark truthfulness of its presentation, is beyond any book of its kind now available. (See excerpt from sponsor's foreword following).

Ordinary erotic literature, as we know it in Europe and America, finds no place in the Soviet scheme of things. Such pornographia as 'The Memoirs of Fanny Hill,' 'The Scented Garden,' 'The Autobiography of a Flea,' mere Sunday school tracts as compared with 'Grushenka,' are vigorously forbidden. Yet 'Grushenka,' than which I know nothing more pornographically obscene, while not officially sponsored by the Soviet authorities, is not seriously frowned upon. The reason for this, of course, is Grushenka's indubitable propaganda value. So authentic an exposé if the unspeakable abuses, the utter licentiousness of Czarist Russia cannot be ignored.

Nor can 'Grushenka' be ignored from a literary view point. Unlike any other book of its kind, we find here a genuine sense of character and its development. Not only is the serf girl Grushenka's mental-emotional growth recorded, but changes in her body from year to year are described with minute care. Sexual experiences and abuses are related as we know they must have happened, not as we might with they had happened, This astounding truthfulness, this sincerity, this non-romanticism is devastating. Add to it a narrative gift which never lets down and a rich background of the social mores of the time and we find ourselves face to face with literature.

'Grushenka' was called to my attention in Moscow among a small group of artist-intellectuals who took it upon themselves to provide me with those conveniences and convivialities which a man of my temperament finds necessary to matter what the political philosophy of the state in which he finds himself. My knowledge of Russian is rudimentary and it was not until I met Tania that I was able to get any real inking of the work. So intrigued was I by this taste that forthwith Tania and I joined in a labour of love to set 'Grushenka' into English. The experience was highly educational for both of us, I flatter myself. Six months later I returned to my Paris apartment with the English manuscript of 'Grushenka.'

My decision to publish 'Grushenka' was made when one of my old friends, a seafaring man of literary inclinations, undertook the delicate task of transporting the printed volumes into England and America. My professional publishing connections in both countries put me in contact with reliable sub-rosa channels of distribution.

What financial gain results from this venture I shall send on to Tania. Being who she is, an emancipated woman of Red Russia, she will give the money to a communal nursery or to a research worker in birth control. Both worthy causes.

Go forth then 'Grushenka' to your English speaking readers. May you be a brief for the U.S.S.R., an explanatory voice for Tania, in addition to literature. May your new audience find you as vivid and thrilling as I did in your translation.

                                                                                                   J.D.
Paris, January 2nd, 1933."

Grushenka wasn't printed in Dijon; the closest the printer got to Dijon was when he went to d'bathroom. It is certainly not based upon secret Russian police files, and it was definitely not translated from a 19th century Russian erotic novel.

Grushenka is, in fact, an American original-in-English pastishe published in New York City, and the anonymous writer and publisher are fascinating characters.

 According to the rumors, Grushenka was written by the famed B-movie producer-writer of the 1940’s classic films, Cat People, Curse of the Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie, and The Body Snatcher.


An enormous amount has been written regarding the “Russian” origins of this erotic classic chock-a-block with prostitution, sadism and the knout, written, all agree, by someone  familiar with Russia but with with lapses in knowledge of Russian customs and folklore. The rumors are true; Val Lewton wrote it. How do we know for sure?

Lewton was born Vladimir Ivan Leventon in 1904 in the Russian port city of Yalta on the Crimea.  The family moved to Berlin to be close to his widowed mother’s sister, the silent screen actress, Alla Nazimova. To the U.S. in 1909. He spoke and wrote Russian. He began his career as writer of very low-paying detective, exotic adventure, sultry-woman-on-the-skids Depression pulp fiction, one of his eight books being The Sword of the Cossack (London: John Hamilton, 1932), a historical novel set in Russia. During this time he was desperate for money to support his wife and children, an ideal motivation to write quick-buck porn. He admits to writing anything that would exploit his writing talent. He knew Russia but left at an early age; the book is filled with utter nonsense regarding Russian mores and customs and many historical inaccuracies, much like The Sword of the Cossack, but possesses enough verisimilitude to suggest authenticity. Grushenka fits within Lewton's chosen theme for his novels; it's a sultry-serf-girl-on-the-skids tale. 


The circumstantial evidence for Lewton's authorship is very strong. The direct evidence nails it, a self-written list of credits compiled by Lewton in 1937 that appears at the end of Joel E. Siegal’s definitive biography, The Reality of Terror (NY: Viking, 1973). Under the subtitle, Pornographic Novels, he lists as his own one Yasmine (“this is said to be one of the most beautifully illustrated books ever published and retails for $75.”). There are, apparently, no copies of Yasmine extant; nobody seems to have ever seen one. All copies appear to have been destroyed by the police.

And there on Lewton's list, under Yasmine, is Grushenka.  Lewton wrote, “I edited the translation from the Russian. I have a beautiful picture of this book taken from the N.Y. Daily Mirror showing it being shoveled into the Police Department furnace.” Given Lewton's background and the fact that Grushenka is not a translation, this smacks of pride of authorship. There is no doubt. Lewton wrote it.

Who published it? According to sexual folklorist, G. Legman, who was intimately involved in the trade in clandestine erotica during the 1930s and 1940s, and the Kinsey Library, Percy Shostac was the publisher. Who he?

Percy Shostac (1892-1968) was a New York City actor, stage manager, poet, playwright, and novelist originally from the Mid-West.  "Percy Shostac could have lived in Chicago or San Francisco, and the content of his novel would have been much the same. But he lived in the vicinity of Tammany Hall and the benches of Union Square, New York, and therefore entitled his volume "14th Street." It is impossible to call it a novel and yet it is endowed with the imaginative richness associated with the novel form; neither is it completely an autobiography, except that the author has made unmistakable references to his own life. The conflict is represented by the clash between his Jewishness and his  outer  surroundings" (Review of 14th Street by Percy Shostac, Simon and Schuster, 1930, in the Jewish Criterion July 18, 1930).

"Poet Shostac has less to say about Manhattan's 14th St. than about himself. He writes this segment of autobiography in unrhymed, uneven lines that read well and easily. Not particularly quotable, never reaching a high poetic plane, never distinguishing between the vocabulary of poetry & prose, his novel in verse has considerable cumulative effect" (Time, July 7, 1930).

Shostac also wrote The World's Illusion, a dramatization of Jacob Wasserman's novel, a manuscript without date; Abelard and Heloise, a one-act play (1915), and The Strength of the Weak, a psychological melodrama in three acts (1919).

Active as a stage manager beginning in 1917, he managed The Captive (1926), a play that critics felt was a corrupting influence on feminine morals and thus won the attention of the authorities. Yet "by January 1927 The Captive was being praised for its enormous 'social value,' its effectiveness in 'educating' sexually impressionable young women. Far from glamorizing lesbian attachments, the play's defenders now argued, The Captive vividly warned against them… Stage manager Percy Shostac explained to the press that many girls in the audience has been sent in detachments from boarding schools and all-female colleges, and that Helen Menken [the star] had 'received several notes from women educators in the audience, deans of women's colleges and finishing schools, who said were already concerned with the necessity of impressing the girls in their charge with the dangers of a reprehensible attachment between two women.' The play, he argued, filled exactly that need" (Hamilton, When I'm Bad, I'm Better: Mae West, Sex, and American Entertainment, p. 99).

Stage and screen actor Basil Rathbone was a friend of Shostac's. They performed together in the romantic comedy, Love Is Like That by S.N. Behrman and Kenyon Nicholson, which ran for twenty-seven performances on Broadway in 1927. Rathbone played Prince Vladimir Dubriski, and exiled Russian who is actually a valet with social ambitions. Shostac portrayed Grigori, who, it seems, was Prince Vladimir's valet.

Rathbone performed in the aforementioned The Captive, a drama in three acts adapted by Arthur Hornblow, Jr., from "La Prisonnière" by Edouard Bourdet which opened at the Empire Theatre, New York City, September 29, 1926, and ran for 160 performances. In his autobiography, In and Out of Character (1962), he wrote of The Captive and Shostac:

"And now to share with you the last act of this hideous betrayal, this most infamous example of the imposition of political censorship on a democratic society ever known in the history of responsible creative theater; this cold-blooded unscrupulous sabotage of an important contemporary work of art; this cheap political expedient to gain votes by humiliating and despoiling the right of public opinion to express and act upon its considered judgment as respected and respectable citizens.

"A few days after the closing of the play we were ordered to appear at a downtown court…Our predicament has now become a case célèbre. We were headline news in every newspaper…"

After recalling the heart-rending testimony of the play's ingenue, Ann Trevor, Rathbone continues:

"His honor was obviously touched by this genuine and most appealing outburst, which was followed immediately by a cold and most incisive statement of his case by our stage manager, Percy Shostac. 'Your honor,' he said, in effect, 'I will not betray the principles by which I endeavor ro live. This is not an evil play, it is not even a harmful play. It is a great play which is saying something extremely important to our present-day society.. Something they need to know about, recognize and act upon. I will under no circumstances desert this production of Monseiur Bourdet's The Captive, even if it should mean that I spend the rest of my life in prison!'

"Ann Trevor and Percy Shostac - two gallant 'little people' unafraid to stand up in defense of their considered judgments and convictions - worthy descendants of the forefathers of this great country."

(Rathbone, a fine actor, was strictly ham on paper, projecting to readers in the balcony).

Shostac had experience with sexually-themed drama and censorship. Why he began to clandestinely publish erotica is likely due to his sympathies and the same reason Lewton wrote Grushenka. It was the depths of the Depression and a man did what he had to do to earn a buck. If he seemed hypocritical, condemning a variety of female sexual behavior then later publishing illegal erotica celebrating female licentousness, he wasn't. He was merely offering an early version of "redeeming social value" to offset the titillation on stage. Sex sells, he knew how to spin, and, as the promo sheet for Grushenka proves, he was a gifted huckster and publicist.

Shostac drifted out of poetry, novels, the theater, and publishing. What next for the man who, after stage managing The Captive, in addition to Grushenka also clandestinely published the erotic novels The Abduction of Edith Martin (1930); The Imitation of Sappho (1930); Crimson Hairs (1934); The Prodigal Virgin (1935), and quite likely (but not certainly) any erotic novel in English from the 1930s with the false imprint, "Dijon, France"?

In 1939 Percy Shostac was a member of the WPA Federal Writer's Project. During the 1940s he was a consultant, publicist, and author for the American Social Hygiene Association of New York and Chicago, in 1944 writing Industry vs. VD.  His next appearance on the radar screen is in a story found in the Village Voice, Oct. 17, 1956. He has turned his hobby of fashioning "weird, gnarled tree roots" into lamp stands into a business with a shop on Grove Street in Greenwich Village.

The first edition of Grushenka was graced with seven illustrations by "Kyu," an artist who was not "a young Parisian Russian." The Kinsey Library surmises that "Kyu" was an alternate pseudonym for the better-known pseudonymous artist, Jacques Merde (!), né William Bernhardt, who illustrated some of Shostac's other sub-rosa publications. Stylistic comparison strongly suggests that Kyu and Jacques Merde/William Bernhardt were one and the same person.

Val Lewton, after his exploits into erotica, became David O. Selznick’s story editor in Hollywood.  In an interesting, little known aside, he wrote (uncredited) the renowned Richmond train station scene in Gone With The Wind where the extent of Confederate wounded and dead is dramatically revealed via an expensive crane-shot pull-back.

In a sequence in Vincent Minnelli’s film The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), the lead character, Jonathan, is depicted producing horror movies so low budget that suggestion, shadow, sound and suspense must be used in lieu of special make-up and film effects. That sequence in Jonathan's career is based upon Lewton’s experience and unlikely success at RKO from 1942-1946 with The Cat People, etc. The bad and the beautiful in bondage succinctly sums up Grushenka. 

"A Russian Woman is Three Times A Woman"  is a non-existent "Old Russian Proverb." However, "She's once, twice, three times a lady" is an old American proverb firmly attributed to Lionel Richie of The Commodores.

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A Notorious Book Condemned by the United States Congress

by Stephen J. Gertz

I, your merry gondolier through the murky waters and curious byways of literature that flow beneath the  bridge of dreamy sighs, bring to your attention, strictly as a caveat lectorem public service, a forgotten classic of 1950s sensationalistic narcotics paranoia and lurid drug eroticism so notorious that it drew the attention of United States Congressman Ezekiel C. Gathings (D-Arkansas) and the House Select Committee  on Current Pornographic Materials, Investigation of Literature Allegedly Containing Objectionable Material of 1952.

After spraying paraquat on Marijuana Girl, a paperback original by N. R. De Mexico (Robert Campbell Bragg, 1918-1954, a member of Anaïs Nin's poetry and erotica-writing circle in NYC), the Committee needled the following opus:

A “book which may be considered another Manual for the Guidance of Potential Dope Addicts is Lady of the Evening by Les Scott. The author does mention some of the evils of drug addiction but probably only as a screen to cover his emphasis of its delights. One chapter… is certainly a glorification of the ecstasies to be derived from marijuana cigarettes…There is also a chapter which describes ‘queer’ life in Greenwich Village, with a pseudo-philosophical discussion of homosexuality, both male and female” (House Select Committee  on Current Pornographic Materials, Investigation of Literature Allegedly Containing Objectionable Material, 82d Congress, 2d Session, 1953, House Report 2510, p.16). 

In sum, if not insane, a sultry dame seduces the male protagonist to join her in heroin addiction; household Hints From Heloise in Hell. Soon, he accompanies her to a dope-soaked orgy hosted by a lesbian junkie-pusher. Later, she takes him on a walking-working tour of a shooting-gallery. Later still, dope-crazy Heloise  rushes headlong toward plate glass to swan dive off a balcony yet behold! she is forcibly prevented from becoming a splattered junkie lady of the evening on the sidewalk only to wind up a screaming junkie lady of the evening in a straight-jacket.

Preceding Lady of the Evening, Scott's Touchable (1951) limns the cautionary tale of small-town girl Ruth, who loses herself in “The Inferno” (the Big City) where lesbianism, prostitution, degradation, absinthe, marijuana, cocaine, and heroin (here known as “The White Fairy”) find her. It's another don't-miss, over-the-top  pulp fiction portrayal of sex and drugs in post-WWII America. Or, at least, in Greenwich Village,  NYC, where the rest of the country expected this sort of activity and got a contact high reading about it.

("Robert W. Tracy," co-author of Touchable, was the pseudonym of Alvin Schwartz, whose enduring fame is as one of the early writers for Batman and Superman comics during the 1940s - he wrote the first Superman comic to feature Bizarro - and who, later, during the 1950s, wrote for Aquaman, The Flash, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman before moving to Canada in 1968 to write documentaries).

Of Scott's Twilight Woman (1952), its dust jacket's blurbmeister  writes, "Tom Grant was convinced that Iris had everything a woman needed. Only she wouldn't marry him. Why? Iris maintained that a woman of the twilight was not good wife material. Grant was convinced she would be better than the woman he had married, Bertha, his ex-wife. Bertha, utterly beautiful, utterly alluring, utterly frigid, but whose white body still held a terrible fascination for him"

"Of course that was before Bertha met Anthony Amato. And then there was red-haired Natalie Jarvis, the estranged wife of a friend. Not to mention Audrey, who 'did her part to keep the kettle bubbling'" (Howard Prouty, ReadInk). Busy Bertha's kettle bubbles bisexually and, by the way, Iris is an "ambisextrous hellion."

A look at the imprint's endpapers tells quite a tale. It's the story of "sophisticate," here a code-word for "adult content," as if the illustration didn't countersink  the nail. "Arco Sophisticates" set  sophistication back a century but made up for it with some of the wildest, most lurid pulp fiction in hardcover you'll ever come across.

Not quite so, however, the many books by Jack Woodford, the 30s-40s screenwriter and author of soft-core pulp, that Arco published. A successful, unpretentious ham n' eggs writer, Woodford wrote a few no-nonsense writing instructional books that get right down to the pith: “One of your first jobs, as you write for money, will be to get rid of your vocabulary.” “Money talks. And writes. And publishes. And reviews. But it can't read.”

Illiterate legal tender aside, the road to Arco Sophisticates begins at  Jack Woodford Press, an imprint established in the late 1940s and edited by two characters with experience publishing and retailing sex lit., Allan Wilson and Moe Shapiro, that the authorities kept their eyes on; it was a division of Citadel Press, which had a reputation for publishing Leftist and erotic literature, and Woodford had been on  the censors' radar for years. Jack Woodford Press reissued many of Woodford's books from the 1930s. By the early  1950s, however, Woodford was an angry alcoholic who felt taken advantage of.

"What Woodford really wanted was to find a publisher with whom he might make more money in royalties and over whom he might exercise more control.

"He had no trouble finding one. During 1951 and 1952, the Arco Publishing Company [established in 1937] issued between seven and twelve novels cowritten by Woodford, as part of their ‘‘Arco Sophisticates’’ series. Milton Gladstone, its founder, had made a publishing breakthrough with a book on how to study for the Army tests, and followed with others in the ‘how-to’ genre. He did not publish much fiction, but obviously Woodford was too tempting to pass up. There were several other writers in the series whose titles, styles, and themes imitated Woodford’s.

"The print runs were approximately 7,000; if Woodford’s contract was like that of other writers, he got an advance of $500 a book, and 50% of all subsidiary rights. In 1952, Gladstone was subpoenaed by the Gathings Committee, and reprimanded for several of the ‘Sophisticates’ because they touched on nymphomania, drug use, gambling, and 'perversions.' One committee member felt he could not even mention many of the titles (Carnal Cargo? Hot Star?); they were 'filthy' and ‘terrible’ (US House of Representatives 230; ‘News of the Week’ 2318). It may have been such pressure that made Gladstone stop issuing the ‘Sophisticates’ line" (Gertzman, Jay A. The Jack Woodford Press: Bestsellers at the Army Base, the Drug Store, and the Tourist Bookstore, 1946–1959. Journal of Popular Culture, Volume 40, Issue 1, February 2007,  pp 25–48).

Without putting too fine a point on it these titillating novels were not sold in mainstream book shops. In addition to drugstores,  Army bases, chain and department stores, typical retail outlets included urban tourist-tenderloin district, i.e. Times Square, NYC, bookstores.

Gladstone sold Arco Publishing Company to Prentice Hall, a division of Simon & Schuster, in 1978.

It would be a grievous omission to not take note of another of Les Scott's books,  Twilight Women.  “The story of a strange love cult and its secret rites! Rance finds himself in the midst of its wild, sensuous members. Trouble. To love them meant not only violating their society’s moral code but punishment by death.” Great cover art (alas, uncredited) illustrates a nude Betty Page-lookalike with a towel draped over her lap and a tree branch masking her breasts. Given the subject matter of Twilight Woman, the secret rites of the strange love cult in Twilight Women will come as no surprise. It's a fun, camp read.

Leslie Scott (1893-1975) was a prolific writer of pulp westerns with over 250 titles to his credit. Why he decided to rip the canvas off the Conestoga wagon to expose the shocking, sordid shadow-world of modern sophisticates remains a mystery but I suspect a shift in the marketplace led him to trade  gingham for sheer gowns.

That shift was quite specific. 1951-1952 heard the roar of anti-drug hysteria over a drug epidemic that did not exist, whipped up by the media after the Kevauver Crime Committee declared organized crime's involvement with the drug trade as "a frightening menace to the youth of America." Suddenly, dope-themed novels became hot-sellers, particularly in paperback. "Murder, rape, kidnapping speedily went out of style as first-choice plot material" (Gerrity, John. The Truth About the Drug Menace. Harper's, February 1952, p. 27, as cited in my Dope Menace).

I did not presume that Leslie Scott and Les Scott were one and the same person simply because the Library of Congress catalogs their books together so I contacted his son, Justin Scott, who confirmed that Les Scott was, yes, Leslie Scott of pulp western fame.

"He did indeed write Lady of the Evening, Touchable, and Twilight Woman. They were handsomely produced books. I've misplaced my copies, they're around the house somewhere I am sure - and I have fond memories of reading them when I was a child."

Yikes! Call retro-Social Services.

"As for reading the 'lurid,' I was a very lucky kid, because my father conveyed the fact - not often stated in those days - that men and women were equal partners in bed."

Cancel that call.

As for Lady of the Evening getting the third degree glare from Congress, he proudly states, "I cannot think of a higher compliment to my father's work."

It is unfortunate that few, beyond the dweeb writing this post, read United States Congressional Committee reports in search of book reviews. Had the Gathings Report been widely read by the general public I suspect that Lady of the Evening might have become a best-seller.

Lady of the Evening is an essential addition to any collection of drug literature, Touchable a tempting elective. 
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SCOTT, Les. Lady of the Evening. A New Arco Sophisticate. New York: Arco Publishing Company,  n.d. [1952]. First Edition. Octavo. 176, [6, as publisher's catalog] pp. Pale green cloth, red lettered. Illustrated endpapers. Dust jacket. 

SCOTT, Les and Robert W. Tracy (pseud. of Alvin Schwartz). Touchable. A New Arco Sophisicate. New York: Arco Publishing Company, n.d. [1951]. First Edition. Octavo. 184, [6, as publisher's catalog] pp. Gray cloth, red lettered. Illustrated endpapers. Dust jacket.

SCOTT, Les. Twilight Woman. A New Arco Sophisticate. New York: Arco Publishing Company, n.d. [1952].  First edition. Octavo. 175, [6, as publisher's catalog] pp. Black cloth, silver lettered. Illustrated endpapers. Dust jacket.

SCOTT, Les. Twilight Women. New York: Beacon B-156, [1957]. 16mo. 186, (5) pp as adv. Illus. wrappers. First Edition, first printing, a paperback original. For some unexplained reason, some date this book to 1952. As Beacon did not begin publishing until 1954 this is clearly a mistake  easily avoided by consulting one of the many paperback reference works.

The Library of Congress' catalog of books by Leslie Scott/Les Scott can be found here.
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Images from the author's collection, with the exception of Twilight Woman courtesy of ReadInk, with our thanks.

Thank you to Justin Scott.

A tip o' the hat to William Dailey for permission to plagiarize my catalog notes from yesteryear.

Special, impossible without him thanks to my friend and colleague in crime and publishment, Jay A. Gertzman, whose only connection to Stephen Jay Gertz is our mutual interest in erotica, the book trade, and censorship, fostered through my uncle and one of his mentors, Elmer Gertz, one of the great 1st Amendment/civil liberties attorneys in the United States during the 20th century.
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