Fan mail from a generation of closeted women flooded the offices of Gold Medal Books after the 1952 publication of Spring Fire – a novel about a lesbian affair among a college sisterhood – from unlikely fans of its author, Marijane Meaker, who has died aged 95.
Unlikely, not only because of the male pseudonym used by Meaker – Vin Packer – but also because its heroine is “saved” from the clutches of a nymphomanical lesbian seducer, who winds up committed to a psychiatric hospital. Although the men who wrote Gold Medal’s hard-boiled crime fiction specialised in exploitation, the daring Spring Fire sold 1.5m copies in its first edition.
