In the mid-1970s, I had the privilege of publishing a slim volume of poetry by two of our Chicago foremothers, Jeannette Howard Foster ( 1895-1981 ) and Valerie Taylor ( 1913-1997 ) . Taylor was a novelist whose books ( known in the trade as lesbian pulps ) had sold millions of copies in the 1960s. Dr. Foster, a scholar, librarian and educator, could claim only one book. The culmination of 30 years of research, Sex Variant Women in Literature: a Historical and Quantitative Study ( hereafter SVWL ) when published in the mid-1950s sold less than half the initial printing of 3,500 copies.
Pictured: Jeannette Howard Foster, Joanne Passet. Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeannette Howard Foster, by Joanne Passet, 2008, Hardcover, 353 pages, $27.50, Da Capo Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group.
By the early 1990s, mainstream presses were no longer able to ignore the audience ( academic and non ) for gay and lesbian books and were publishing them a rapid rate. I was one of two lay activists invited to be on the advisory board for what would become an award-winning reference book, Gay & Lesbian Literature ( St. James Press, 1994 ) . A panel of 20 editors had assembled a list of hundreds of potential candidates for inclusion, authors whose contributions figured prominently in the field since 1900, and asked the Advisors to rank or eliminate them winnowing the field down to two hundred. Dr. Jeannette Howard Foster, author of SVWL, a true pioneer was not on that initial list.
Even after I proposed her, as a basically "one book" author she was deemed less important than other figures slated for inclusion. I pointed out that SVWL had been reprinted twice in intervening years and was in demand by a new audience. Combing existing sources, I was only able to come up with one major article to supplement her nomination: "The X-Rated Bibliographer: A Spy in the House of Sex" by Karla Jay in Lavender Culture ( Harcourt, 1978 ) . I included information about Foster's work as Dr. Alfred Kinsey's first librarian and listed writers that were chosen for inclusion who had acknowledged their debt to her study: Lillian Faderman, Jonathan Ned Katz, Gayle Rubin, et al. I gleaned what I could of her academic credentials from her book jacket and her letters to me, which also revealed the names of contemporary correspondents already included in the volume: Sarton, Gidlow, Flanner and Grier. Eventually the librarians on the Board prevailed and the editors concurred that Foster was worthy of inclusion, of her place in the history of our movement.
Now, another fifteen years down the road, Joanne Passet, a bloodhound of a biographer, has pursued the scant trail that sustained us for decades and has tracked the fully-fleshed woman. Dr. Joanne Passet, ( uniquely qualified with dual doctorates in library science and women's history ) teaches at Indiana University, also the home base of Dr. Kinsey's Institute for Sex Research. Passet pursued Foster's paper trail, amassing a wealth of information at a variety of institutions across the country where Foster studied or taught. She was also able to gain access to Dr. Kinsey's sex/survey-interview with Foster that was a prerequisite for her employment, and a similar-themed survey that activist/scholar Karla Jay PhD had used when compiling The Gay Report ( Summit, 1979 ) . Jay also visited Dr. Foster in the 1970s making a recording of their interview. These and other primary sources enrich the text.
Dr. Passet's book gives us a rare window into the sex life of an early 20th century lesbian. Against the warp of Foster's 30-years' pursuit of books essential for her magnum opus, Passet weaves several parallel threads; the educational opportunities open to mid-West women after the turn of the last century, the options for making a living by a woman who was aware early on that she would be self-supporting her whole life, an extended look at academic libraries and librarians, the emotional trail of a woman-loving woman exploring a world opposed to her finding a partner and supportive lifestyle, and glimpses into the checkered history of publishing lesbian books. Passet recounts Karla Jay's observation that so single-minded was Foster that if certain rare books had only been available in the Vatican library she would have become a nun to access them.
Along the way Passet shows that Foster allowed her romantic loves to dictate her choices of the schools she attended, her college majors, chase her heart across the country to unsatisfactory jobs, and purchased property later sold as hope was lost. Her "beloveds" were mostly older women ( she would later bemoan outliving many of them ) a few were younger, one a student who rebuffed her reticent teacher saying there were plenty of college kids who could give her what she wanted. Even her longest, most satisfying relationship would melt into an enduring friendship as she continued to live with her once-lover and the new partner until ending her days in a nursing home.
Foster had difficulty in getting SVWL published. Though the post-WW II pulp-paperback revolution had embraced lesbian fiction, mainstream and academic presses were loathe to chance serious work. Foster could only commiserate with Margaret Anderson of The Little Review fame who wrote her, after finding a copy of the London edition of SVWL in France, asking for help in finding an outlet for her lesbian novel of romantic obsession. Foster ultimately had been forced to self publish with a vanity press. It would be another twenty years before Foster would re-emerge on the crest of the women's liberation movement with her poetry, prose, and a literary translation published by three different lesbian presses.
Passet does an excellent job exploring the passions, politics and perfidies of some of the lesbian-feminist presses that boomed in the 1970s. She posits Foster as a symbol for the evolution of lesbian publishing in the 20th century. In her section on "The Two Barbaras" Passet documents the 1974 efforts of two prominent movement figures to get SVWL reprinted. Foster ( and Passet ) seem to have been unaware of the sub rosa networking that was done among feminists working for libraries and publishers at the height of the women's movement, falling prey to the suggestion by Grier that Gittings' expressions of "nibbles" of interest from mainstream presses was something sinister. Grier used her considerable influence with the isolated Foster to imbue Gittings' motives with her own longstanding personal dislike and mistrust, lobbying instead for reprint by one of the nascent, under-capitalized lesbian publishers. Foster acceded choosing Diana Press, a fateful decision for SVWL.
Passet's Sex Variant Woman is well annotated with a selected bibliography. The index is, as so many these days prepared by electronic key-word selection, fraught with lacunae ( full of holes ) . When the Diana Press edition reached Dr. Foster in 1976, as a good librarian, she decried the narrow margins on the paperbound reprint limiting rebinding. Had she seen the current volume she would certainly despair at the non-archival quality of paper used.
Jeannette Howard Foster's local shadow extends beyond her book and her years at the University of Chicago as student and teacher. After her death in 1981 I delivered a memorial lecture at the Jane Addams Bookstore; Joe Gregg interjected from the audience that he had been a protégé of Foster, that she had advanced him funds to go to graduate school at her Alma Mater. Gregg had just become co-director of the Gerber-Hart Library, further extending her influence when her bibliography from SVWL was used to obtain a significant grant enabling the expansion of their collection of lesbiana. Dr. Foster was inducted into the City of Chicago's Gay & Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1998.
Copyright 2008 by Marie J. Kuda
Joanne Passet will read from and sign copies of Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeannette Howard Foster Fri., Aug. 8, at 7:30 p.m., at Women and Children First Bookstore, 5233 N. Clark; 773-769-9299.
