Sam (1950S New York, A Cast Of People Centred On A Gay Publisher Find Their Lives Turned Inside Out As They Each Seek To Satisfy Their Ambitions And Find Love). Lonnie Coleman Gay Themes,Literature

Octavo. 208 pp. Red cloth, in good order, gilt titles to spine. The jacket is unclipped with virtually no edge wear. A near-fine copy of the first UK edition of an important US novel on the lives of homosexuals in New York. Coleman's book was one of the first to examine homosexuality in the brittle, metropolitan world of New York. The central character is Sam, a publisher and his live-in partner, Walter an actor, who is prepared to do whatever it takes to be successful. An undercurrent of violence is present through Toby, the husband of Addie, who is pregnant. Toby is jealous of her love for Sam and eventually wreaks a terrible and strange vengeance, perhaps a symptom of his repressed homosexuality. Marriages are unhappy, men and women punishing each other relentlessly, and Sam's relationship with Walter is strained, but several characters find happiness at the end as relationships are reconfigured.