Okay, it is just #715 in the regular Signet series, not part of the Signet Classics, but the cover sure qualifies as a classic. We were going through some books that came to us as part of the
Charles Jackson Papers and the 1949 paperback of his
The Fall of Valor stopped us in our tracks. Is that cover saying what we think it says? Yep--in 1949, they had the guts to blatantly show homosexual attraction right there on the cover. This must be one of the earliest (certainly the earliest in our collections) overt depiction of a queer theme on a book cover. This just wasn't done in the 1940s. You could have a gay subplot, you could even write a novel with a lesbian main character, but don't show it on the cover!
Signet was still being careful to let readers know this behavior was NOT normal. The inside cover couched the novel as a kind of psychological examination of a somewhat sinister condition: Jackson explores "the dark corners of the unconscious... whose inevitable climax inspires both terror and pity." Then, if we didn't get it, they say, "The Fall of Valor is a medical case history transmuted into dramatic and expressive fiction." Well, they were still being pretty damned homophobic on the inside, but they were willing to go for it on the cover. It might be worrisome, but they knew sex sells.
We haven't cataloged this one quite yet, but it will be ready soon.
