I have always found the website, Librarything a little off putting and difficult to use. However, I was recently contacted by a lovely gentleman named Don who suggested I might like to have a look at his collection which he has painstakingly scanned and uploaded and catalogued on the website.
It's a truly magnificent collection numbering several thousand items and it take a bit of work to get into, but it's thoroughly rewarding to dig in. The signed section alone is a small miracle of book collecting. And, as Don noted to me, many of these items, especially pulp fiction and periodicals haven't had their covers scanned and made Internet-able before.
You can start at the collection's Home Page or, perhaps the best way of beginning to navigate it is to start with the complete list of tags.
For anyone with an interest in obscure gay literature, interesting book covers, bibliography... this collection can't be recommended highly enough for a good dig around. It does take a little while to get used to the website if you haven't used it before, but definitely worth the trouble.
It would be foolish of me to attempt a description of the collection so I'm going to simply reproduce Don's own description:
"Collecting and reading interests include gay history and gay literature -- and historical and fictional books about the City of Houston (this latter collection of 630 books has been acquired by the Houston Metropolitan Research Center and has been removed from "My Library").
Collecting emphasis in FIRST EDITION SIGNED books by William S. Burroughs, James Purdy, Coleman Dowell, James Robert Baker, Paul Bowles, Harold Brodkey, W. H. Auden, Carl Van Vechten, Daniel R. Brown (Daniel Curzon), Richard Howard, Daryl Hine, James Broughton, Martin Duberman, Michael Rumaker, Larry Kramer, Bruce Benderson, John Ashbery, James Baldwin, Edmund White, John Rechy, Christopher Bram, Robert Duncan, "Jess" Collins, Samuel Steward (Phil Andros), Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, Tony Kushner, Robert Chesley, Lanford Wilson, Doric Wilson, William Inge, Truman Capote, Felice Picano, Alan Hollinghurst, Michael Cunningham, Christopher Rice, Langston Hughes, Edward Albee, David Leavitt, James Merrill, Harold Norse, Dennis Cooper, Donald Windham, Adam Haslett, Eric Garber (Andrew Holleran), Paul Cadmus, Cy Twombly, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham, Antony Sher, Arthur Evans, Derek Jarman, Colm Toibin, Armistead Maupin, Joseph Hansen (James Colton, Rose Brock), Richard Fullmer (Dirk Vanden), Tom Wakefield, Patrick Gale, Paul Jones (Paul Mariah), Tim Dlugos, Kenward Elmslie, Joe Brainard, Winston Leyland, Parker Tyler, Charles Henri Ford, Ian Young, and Allen Ginsberg.
There are also many signed editions of gay "small press" poets writing during the years 1960-2000.
Also unsigned editions of Jean Genet, Andre Gide, Edward Carpenter, Gordon Merrick, Wallace Hamilton, Jim Kepner, John Horne Burns, Carl Corley, Thom Racina (Teryl Andrews), Victor J. Banis (Don Holliday, Victor Jay, J. X. Williams, Victor Dodson), Christian Davies (Chris Davidson), Thom Racina (Teryl Andrews), George Davies (Lance Lester, Ricardo Armory), Vincent Lardo (Julian Mark), Marcus Miller, George Haimsohn (Alexander Goodman), William Corington (John Coriolan), Jay Greene, William Maltese (William J. Lambert III, Chad Stuart, Alex Mann, Cort Forbes, Kyle Reich, Raymond Lange, Bryant Tyler, Lambert Wilhelm), Douglas Dean Goodman (Douglas Dean), John H. Kimbro (Kym Allyson), George Scithers (Felix Lance Falkon), Philip H. Lee (Carl Driver), and Peter Tuesday Hughes.
There are a near complete run of issues of TANGENTS; ONE magazine (including representative runs of ONE Newsletters and ONE Confidentials); ONE INSTITUTE QUARTERLY; THE MATTACHINE REVIEW and other publications of the Mattachine Society (including some issues of INTERIM); publications of the Gay Academic Union; DORIAN BOOK QUARTERLY; VECTOR, a publication of the Society for Individual Rights; DRUM, a publication of the Janus Society; S.T.H. (Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts) chapbooks; the first issues of PACE!; RFD; CHRISTOPHER STREET; MANROOT; and, the GLQ Journal; the first two issues of PARAGRAPH; GAY SUNSHINE; GAY COMIX; MAGNUS; Boston FAG RAG; Chicago GAY CRUSADER; GREYHUFF REVIEW; and, AYE! Newsletter of the National Gay Lobby. There is a complete run of the first 16 issues of the ADVOCATE, as well as several early issues of GAYS ON THE HILL.
There are many early issues of Directory Services (DSI) publications: VAGABOND Catalogs, BUTCH, GALERIE, TIGER and RUGGED.
Also included are some early issues of European gay periodicals: AMIGO:THE HOMOPHILE MAGAZINE; (German and English); THE SPIRIT LAMP (Oxford University); VENNEN/DER FREUND (Danish); EOS (Danish); VRIENDSCHAP (Dutch); ARCADIE (French); DER WEG; (German); DER RING (Dutch/German) DER NEUE RING (German); DER KREIS (Swiss/German); and, ICSE Newsletters (International Committee on Sexual Equality).
There is a complete run of the following gay magazines and journals: LITTLE CAESAR; CITY LIGHTS JOURNAL; GANYMEDE; GAY LITERATURE:A New Journal; SEBASTIAN QUILL; MOUTH OF THE DRAGON; THE EUROPEAN GAY REVIEW; TRIBE: An American Gay Journal; and, PROVOCATEUR.
The collection contains a near complete series of the classic gay pulps of the 60's and early 70's, including those published by the French Line (PEC), Parisian Press, Grand Prix, Barclay House, Brandon House, Eiffel Classic, Hamilton House, Greenleaf Classics, Guild Press, 101 Enterprises, Classic Publications, Golden Boy, Frenchy's Gay Line, Continental Classics, Centaur, SVEA (published in Denmark), Pleasure Reader; and Phenix. There is also a near complete set of the famed online "Gay on the Range" collection.
There are the Number One issues of some of the 1950-60's famed "beefcake" magazines, including FIZEEK ART QUARTERLY, ADONIS, FIZEEK, MALE FIGURE, MARS, MUSCLE BOY, THE YOUNG PHYSIQUE, MUSCLES A GO-GO, VIM, HOMBRE, BOYS IN LEATHER and the rare MANHATTAN MALE.
There are first copy issues of the early gay comics, including Joe Boy; Wendel; Gay Comix; Rage Gay Crusader; ChicosModernos; and, The Uncensored Adventures of Harry Chess.
And finally, there are the number one issues of the following: the short-lived BACHELOR magazine (published by Lucius Beebe); HARVEY MILK ARCHIVES NEWSLETTER; AMETHYST:A JOURNAL FOR LESBIANS AND GAY MEN; the short-lived THE FORUM OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA and DRAGONFLY of Sidney Smith."
