Browne was born in Australia She got herself to England. She made her name in the West End opposite Robert Morley in THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER. Years later, she was in the premiere of the late Joe Orton's WHAT THE BUTLER SAW (which, if memory serves, was not initially well received by audiences or critics--but what did they know?) Her performances in THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE (the play and movie considered a bit scandalous at the time--late 1960s), THE RULING CLASS and DREAMCHILD are high-water marks of a career. DREAMCHILD had a fetching surreality to it. One of her most intriguing roles was in AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD, wherein Browne, in a teleplay by Alan Bennett, played herself, many years later, while touring in the Soviet Union, meeting with Guy Burgess, played by Alan Bates.

Coral Browne married actor Vincent Price in 1974, and they became a popular and colorful celebrity couple in Hollywood. Browne and Price were often about Boston, in the years Price was host of WGBH's MYSTERY series. And who can ever forgot that completely off-the-wall  TV ad Browne and Price did together--pitching some gizmo that zapped flies? Well, it was the 70s. There are photos throughout the book, lots of notes and an index.

CORAL BROWNE: 'THIS EFFING LADY' - $50.00

This anniversary edition of THE BOYS IN THE BAND includes an introduction by TONY KUSHNER as well as previously unpublished photographs of the playwright and the cast of the play.

THE BOYS IN THE BAND  - $14.95

Day (1864-1933) was a central figure in cultural communities on both sides of the Atlantic. As a publisher, he issued works by Oscar Wilde and Stephan Crane. He was mentor to Kahlil Gibran. As a photographer, he was colleagues with Alvin Langdon Coburn and Edward Steichen. Day was a pioneer in the field of pictorial photography--the paramount of which was his crucifixion series, considered scandalous at the time. As a publisher, his house issued more than a hundred titles between 1893 and 1899.

Bad health kept him in his home in Norwood, MA, for the last fourteen years of his life. He enjoyed wearing Navy uniforms for his last twenty years, and photographed some of his young male subjects dressed as sailors. By the time he died, his career and his work were largely ignored. But in the last twenty-five years, there has been a revival of interest in his achievments. Fanning's book includes 100 photographs, including 32 duotone illustrations of the artist's work.

THROUGH AN UNCOMMON LENS is a hardcover from the University of Massachusetts Press

THROUGH AN UNCOMMON LENS - $40.00

Authors included in this book are: Yeva Wiest, Rane Ketcher, Rakelle Valencia, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Diane Thibault, Sapphyre Reign, KR Silkenvoice, Raven Black, Lora McCall and many others.

WETTER is a trade paperback from Alyson Books

WETTER - $14.95

The gossip about The Hell-Fire Clubs scandalized 18th Century English society. There were the rumors of orgies, recruiting young women into prostitution, vast libraries of erotica, strange initiation rituals. Lord moves past the gossip and brings to light the first accurate account of the membership--which included John Wilkes, the Prince of Wales and others--their beliefs, activities and the reasons for the proliferation, first in the British Isles and later in America, quite possibly under the auspices of Benjamin Franklin.

The Hell-Fire Clubs operated under a variety of titles, but all attracted similar members--mainly upper-class men with lots of leisure time and the desire to shock staid society. Lord describes how the clubs emerged and flourished, their various phases, which first involved violence as an assertion of maleness, religious blasphemy and later sexual indulgence; also the counter-movement that suppressed them. This is a spicy sidebar to the culture of the Enlightenment.

THE HELL-FIRE CLUBS is a hardcover from Yale University Press

THE HELL-FIRE CLUBS - $32.50

The book publisher Taschen has recently issued a new title, THE BIG PENIS BOOK. Not too long ago, they had a huge hit with their book of large female breasts and, I presume, they figured they’d have a hit with a book on the cock—what I once read was referred as “the male penis”! They may well have.

I remember when I first read  Gore Vidal's novel MYRA BRECKINRIDGE, and Myra, in a riff on ancient Greek history, made a reference to the cock-worshipping Dorians. It seems the Dorians were not the only ancient tribe to make a fetish of  “the male penis.” The content of THE BIG PENIS BOOK is, surprise, a series of pictures, in black and white and color, of generously endowed males showing their stuff, some flaccid, some erect. Dian Hanson edited the volume and wrote the informative introduction. Her intro is full of fun facts. Here’s one: “Everyone takes the big penis personally, as an object of fear, arousal, and endless fascination, that last derived from the Latin fascinum, meaning both phallus and magical spirit.” Did you know that male gorillas have the smallest penis of the great apes? Chimps have cocks three times the size of the gorilla. Homo sapiens, at least the male part of the species, it turns out, have the largest cocks among the primates. How did that happen? Natural selection or original design?

The sainted Alfred Kinsey made measuring cocks part of his research—is that slot still open? He measured 3500 men as part of his research for his revolutionary book, SEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN THE HUMAN MALE, which is still news today, sixty years later. He measured the men, or actually, had the men measure themselves, when erect. But each erection, as guys know, is different. Age is a factor, as is health, and, of course, passion. In Kinsey’s stats, most men come in with an erection measuring about 6 inches. There’s that great line in the movie version of THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE where Maggie Smith, playing the lead character, asks one of her young female students to open a window. The Scottish lass opens the window all the way. Brodie, looking miffed, walks over and draws the window down to a more modest opening, noting “six inches is enough for any young lady.” According to Kinsey, men with erect cocks over 8 inches were only 1.8% of his sampling. He had no one in his sample with more than 9 inches. If we did all this measurement in the metric system, it might sound more impressive. Other cock studies have led to downsizing Kinsey’s findings.

Many of the photos in the book are of black men. Hanson has a meditation on the European colonist’s obsession with the African male member, which apparently remains. She notes: “When I typed ‘big+black+cock’ into Google I got 1,070,000 hits [I think she means reports], compared to 79,300 for ‘big+white+cock.’” Hanson, whose work experience includes editing men’s magazines, was surprised to learn that straight men, some of them, are obsessed with penis size. There are, of course, the various web sites for those interested on the long male member. Hanson pretty much agrees with Myra Breckinridge: that once—sometime between 10,000 and 5000 years ago—the various tribes figured out the role of male sexual functioning in getting women pregnant, the cult of the Goddess was overthrown and the cult of the male and the cock took over, still with us today. Myra’s mission was to bring back the goddess, via the classic Hollywood movie…but that’s another, and very twisted, story.

It’s no surprise that a great deal of the content of this book is reproductions from  gay studios, gay photographers and gay men’s magazines. Most are solo shots; some include the male with a female. Most of the models are nude; some are in costume or uniform or work clothes—truck driver, leatherman, that sort of thing. In an appendix, Hanson includes little bios of the many models and the photographers, which is not only sweet but gives the book some historical utility.

At any rate, if THE BIG PENIS BOOK is a success for Taschen, will they come out with a companion book, THE SMALL PENIS BOOK? Stay tuned. THE BIG PENIS BOOK is an oversized hardcover.

BARELY WORKING is a hardcover from powerHouse Books

BARELY WORKING - $39.95

This book was a prodigious undertaking. Based on the work of seventy researchers in fifteen countries, this is a comprehensive document of the history of homosexuals in all regions of the world. Originally published in France in 2003, to considerable acclaim, this DICTIONARY includes over 160 essays on various aspects of gay rights and homophobia in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the South Pacific, from early times to the present.

THE DICTIONARY OF HOMOPHOBIA is a hardcover, 496 pages, from Arsenal Pulp Press

THE DICTIONARY OF HOMOPHOBIA - $44.95

Included among the contributors are: Cheyenne Blue, Pamela Sue Gallien, Lynne Murray, Miel Rose, Rowan Elizabeth, Giselle Renarde, Yuri, Allison Wonderland, Simone Graham, Sophie Moutte and others.

BEST LESBIAN LOVE STORIES 2009 is a trade paperback from Alyson Books

BEST LESBIAN LOVE STORIES 2009 - $15.95