The Gayest Books: Edward Sagarin and the Cory Book Service

“Rapidly growing interest in the subject of homosexuality has made novels on this theme a big seller...”

Happy Pride Month! After one publishing house started finding success with publishing books focusing on themes of homosexuality in the late 1940s and early 1950s, they began keeping a mailing list of those interested in gay books. But the United States Postal Service started catching on, and the publishers were indicted on obscenity charges.

That didn't stop Donald Webster Cory, the pen name of American academic Edward Sagarin, from starting his own gay mail-order book business in 1952: the Cory Book Service. But Sagarin was plagued by internalized homophobia, and for decades maintained that homosexuality was a mental illness that can be cured. That is, until another queer academic had enough of Edward's drama.

Theme music is credited to Wendy Marcini, Elvin Vanguard, and Jules Gaia.

Instagram: @literaryscandals

Selected bibliography:

• Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement by David K. Johnson

• "The Book Club That Helped Launch the Gay-Rights Movement," The New Yorker

• "Sagarin, Edward (Donald Webster Cory)," GLBTQ: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Culture