So I went back to graduate school. I earned a teaching credential, a master’s degree, and ultimately, a doctorate. It was an undertaking that consumed a whole decade from the mid-60s to the mid-70s, and led me to a position as a college professor, then a program director, and finally, an assistant dean in the university where I pursued my academic career. I did a lot of writing, of course, but it was all academic papers, memos, study materials, and professional letters. Ann Bannon had ceased to exist; she had become a phantom of my surprising past, almost as much a fictional character as Beebo Brinker herself. I thought I would never return to her, that no one knew she had ever had a life or written a word. The Greenwich Village of the 1950s and 60s had never seemed so far away.
And then the unimaginable happened. The New York Times publishing branch, Arno Press, wrote to me. They wanted permission to include four of my books in a library edition of gay and lesbian literature, under the rubric Homosexuality: Lesbians and Gay Men in Society, History and Literature. It was the first hint I had that Beebo Brinker and her creator had earned a life of their own.
I gratefully accepted the offer from the Times, and the hardcover edition was duly published. That, I thought, must be that; it was a sort of fluke. There was a glimmer of interest in the books as vignettes of a bygone time; indeed, in Ann Bannon herself as a sort of historical artifact. But the wave subsided. Several years went by, during which my children entered college, my long and difficult marriage ended, and my university career prospered.
And then it happened again. I was alone for the first time in my life in the early 1980s, living in a rental townhouse, when the telephone rang at a severely early hour one morning. It was Barbara Grier of Naiad Press, calling from Tallahassee, Florida. She had gotten my name from the people at Arno Press and tracked me down. I remembered Barbara’s name from the years when I was avidly reading any copies of The Ladder that I could get my hands on, and she was editing it as Gene Damon; I remembered reading about a bibliography of lesbian literature she had compiled, but I had never seen it. The name of the Naiad Press was entirely new to me.
But not for long. Barbara and her partner, Donna McBride, wanted to bring out the five books which had to do with Laura, Beth, and Beebo. It was my first inkling that my stories had been valued and preserved by a whole generation of women; that despite the crumbling condition of the old pulp paper and fading ink, they had survived on many bookshelves in many homes.
Barbara and I arranged to meet at a public appearance she had scheduled at Old Wives’ Tales Women’s Bookstore in San Francisco, where she introduced me to a cheering crowd. It was a wonderful, if confounding, re-introduction to the lesbian world. I met her and Donna again at a conference of the National Women’s Studies Association at Humboldt State University, where I signed the contract that resulted in the Naiad Press re-issuance of the books. First came a pocket book edition in 1983; then a trade paperback edition in 1986. I held my breath, fearing an indifferent reception from the public. But women all across the country embraced these stories of a now far-off generation of sisters. It was not just history; it was their history.
I have always been gratified that the books sold so well and rewarded the confidence that Barbara and Donna placed in them. The debt I owe them has been frequently acknowledged over the intervening years, but it bears repeating. They really brought Beebo back to life, and in so doing, gave Ann Bannon a presence in the community that she would not otherwise have had. It was a remarkable gift, and one for which I will always be thankful.
As a direct result of the Naiad editions, I was featured in the documentary movie, Before Stonewall, in the mid-1980s; and subsequently in the Canadian-produced film of lesbian lives made in the early 90s, Forbidden Love. Imagine coming back from the dead after more than twenty years and discovering that scholarly articles have been published about you, that there are master’s theses dealing with your work, and university literature classes teaching it.
In time, the Naiad Press editions ran their course while I labored in the groves of Academe. Almost a decade after the trade paperback edition came out, and as the remaining copies of that edition were being depleted, lightning struck again. This time it was the Quality Paperback Book Club, a subsidiary of Book-of-the-Month Club, which wanted to publish an omnibus edition of four of the books as part of their Triangle Classics: Illuminating the Gay and Lesbian Experience.
It seemed to me that nothing more could possibly happen to these books. They had enjoyed an unprecedented run. They had given me access to a vibrant young community, a whole new generation of men and women who listened as I lectured in venues across the
