The first bestselling paperback original in the US was a work of lesbian pulp fiction
One of the very first paperback originals in the US published in 1950 was Tereska Torres’ “Women’s Barracks,” a fictional account of life among female Free French soldiers in London during World War II (based on the author’s experiences), reports Katie Yee at Literary Hub (www.lithub.com).
It’s widely referred to as the first candidly lesbian novel and is credited for popularizing pulp fiction.
It is probably not surprising that it also faced obscenity trials in both the US and Canada. (The defense lawyer argued that
it was “no franker than that in the Iliad.”) Of course, controversy sells! Over 4 million copies of “Women’s Barracks” were sold in the United States alone, crowning it our first bestselling paperback original.
Torres was shocked that her book shocked people. In an interview with Salon.com, she said, “French literature is full of sexual description… I felt I was extremely tame! […] Maybe it’s my French outlook on sex. I didn’t think it was sexuality; it was life … That’s the way life is. Life is sexual.”
