GAY BAR

BRANSON, Helen P.; Blanche M. Baker (Introduction)

Price: $400.00

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San Francisco: Pan-Graphic Press, 1957. First edition. 8vo. Blue cloth in pictorial dust jacket. Very good in about very good DJ. Some splitting at folds of jacket, reinforced in several places with archival mending tape. Toning to edges. Presents well in Brodart. Book has some offsetting to endpapers. Else clean and sound. 89pp. (Item ID: 23047)

Memoir of gay bar owner Branson, whose establishment Helen's was long a San Francisco institution. A scarce title, it provides a valuable picture of gay life in the 1950's. The first book issued from Pan-Graphic Press, publisher of the landmark gay journal Mattachine Review. From a first printing of 1600 copies, many of which we suspect remained unsold and were destroyed given this title's scarcity. [Young 295*]. Recently reissued by The University of Wisconsin Press, it remains an important source. The first edition remains uncommon, especially in jacket.

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