The Publishing of Queer British Fiction, 1945-1967

根据伊恩·杨（Iain Young）的《文学中的男性同性恋：参考书目》（The Male Homosexual in Literature：A Bibliography），从1946年到1967年，英国有超过100家不同的出版商出版了500多部以同性恋男主角或重要的同性恋次要情节为主题的小说。但是，尽管存在于马特·霍尔布鲁克（Matt Houlbrook）的《酷儿伦敦》（2005）中的一位受访者所描述的“不宽容时期”，一个因“纠缠不休”而被起诉的急剧增加的时代，但多家出版商是如何传播我们现在将其归类为英国酷儿小说的先锋的呢？这个项目将创建一个战后酷儿小说的出版历史，以追踪罗伯特·达恩顿所说的“书的生命周期”-负责创作，营销和接收这些作品的演员和网络。关注玛丽雷诺，安格斯威尔逊，马丁戈夫和其他人的里程碑式的文本，它将询问在查泰莱夫人的情人审判之前（和之后）的一段时间里，存在什么动机来测试淫秽法律的限制。像约翰·盖斯特这样的同性恋出版商在形成他们的名单时扮演了什么角色？《沃尔芬登报告》（1957）是否影响了出版商的决策？这些书在一个由公共图书馆主导的市场中是如何定位的？它们的营销是为了吸引特定的读者群吗？他们受到什么样的欢迎和批评？更广泛地说，该项目将考虑战后出版业利用英国社会中同性恋的模糊地位的方式。

According to Iain Young's The Male Homosexual in Literature: A Bibliography, there were over 500 novels featuring queer male protagonists or significant queer subplots published by over 100 different publishers in Britain from 1946-1967. But how was it that multiple publishers came to disseminate the vanguard of what we would now classify as queer British fiction, despite existing in what one interviewee in Matt Houlbrook's Queer London (2005) describes as the 'intolerant period', an era that saw a drastic increase in prosecutions for 'importuning'? This project will create a publishing history of post-war queer fiction to trace what Robert Darnton calls 'the life-cycle of the book'-the actors and networks responsible for the creation, marketing and reception of these works. Focusing on landmark texts by Mary Renault, Angus Wilson, Martyn Goff and others, it will ask what motivations existed for testing the limits of obscenity law in a time before (and after) the Lady Chatterley's Lover trial. What role did queer publishers such as John Guest play in shaping their lists? Did the Wolfenden Report (1957) affect publishers' decisions? How were these books positioned within a marketplace dominated by public libraries with conservative stocking policies? Were they marketed to appeal to a particular readership? What was their popular and critical reception? More broadly the project will consider the ways in which post-war publishing exploited the ambiguous position of queerness in British society.