The Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives / Materials / Records / Inventories
	Inventory of the Records of The Body Politic & Pink Triangle Press
	Page 13 of 40 / Appx 830 words

Page 13 / Inventory Series 5
Other Press ventures
Beyond The Body Politic

The incorporation of Pink Triangle Press in Jul 1975 encouraged the gradual development of publishing and sales ventures other than The Body Politic. The first items offered were pink triangle pins, for $1.25 apiece. The significance of the pink triangle (for which, see Appendix 1) was explained on page 1 of the Feb 1976 issue -- which also, belatedly, announced the formation of the Press.

An ad in the Feb 1977 issue had a clip-out order form for Jonathan Katz's Gay American History, available from TBP. The back cover of # 33, May 1977, offered six titles (four of them Canadian) from "The Body Politic's new mail order service." By Issue 35 it was the Pink Triangle Press Book Service -- for which large ads ran through Sep 1978 and smaller ones thereafter, offering up more than 60 titles over time. With the May 1979 issue the Press abandoned the service, on the back cover "pleased to announce -- Gay books from Glad Day." [1]

The Press became a book publisher on its own with the release, announced in the Oct 1977 issue, of the first North American edition of With Downcast Gays: Aspects of Homosexual Self- oppression. [2] A second edition appeared in 1979. Until 1980 the Press was also publisher of the Canadian Gay Archives Publication Series [3], and in mid-1982 released Flaunting It! A decade of gay journalism from The Body Politic. [2]

The Press bought its first typesetting equipment in early 1977 and -- to help finance the machine -- soon began offering small- scale commercial service. This became PinkType, which lasted until 1985, staffed at various times by Merv Walker, Billy Sutherland, Gay Bell, Amy Gottlieb, Pam Godfrey, Carol Auld and John Allec.

These efforts -- PinkType in part; the publishing and mail- order sales work entirely -- tapped and often diverted staff and volunteer energies normally devoted to The Body Politic. Only in the case of PinkType and a short-lived Press Collective were separate organizational units set up to handle them.

From its birth in early 1984 to the demise of The Body Politic three years later, Xtra was an integral part of the editorial, advertising and distribution workings of TBP. Material related to it is therefore not included in this "Beyond TBP" series. Xtra's editorial work eventually fell to the "Inmag Group" -- for more on which (including an explanation of the group's name) see Series 16: Listings.

82-002 / 01

Pink Triangle Press. General correspondence related to Press activities, 1976-1979.

82-002 / 01

Pink Triangle Press. Pin orders, 1976-1977.

82-019 / 14

Pink Triangle Press mailing list, 1976-1977 (on 3 x 5-inch cards).

82-002 / 03

Pink Triangle Press sales, 1979-1981.

82-002 / 02

Pink Triangle Press. Files related to publication of With Downcast Gays, 1976-1979 (includes correspondence with co-authors Andrew Hodges and David Hutter).

87-004 / 15

Pink Triangle Press. Invoices for sales of Homosexuality in Canada (Canadian Gay Archives publication # 1), 1979-1980.

82-002 / 01

Pink Triangle Press Book Service. Administrative files, correspondence and customer lists, 1978-1979.

82-002 / 01

Pink Triangle Press Book Service. Material related to cooperative sales efforts with Glad Day Books, 1980-1981.

82-002 / 02

Press Collective. Administrative files and general correspondence, 1977-1978.

82-003 /01

PinkType. Administrative files, 1977-1981.

83-023 / 02

PinkType. Administrative files, 1979-1983.

83-023 / 01

PinkType. Correspondence, 1979-1983.

82-009 / 01

Flaunting It!. Project development, editorial and production files, 1981- 1982.

82-009 / 02

Flaunting It!. Editorial and production files, 1982.

85-017 / 01

Flaunting It!. Orders, 1982.

86-003 / 01

Pink Triangle Press sales, 1981-1983 (including monthly reports, invoices and correspondence related to the 1979 edition of With Downcast Gays).

86-003 / 01

Flaunting It!. Post-publication materials.

1. Glad Day's ads, appearing through Feb 1981 usually as the full back cover, were produced by TBP and run free in return for a percentage of sales. As far as I know, this was the only such arrangement the magazine ever had with a commercial advertiser. Glad Day proprietor Jearld Moldenhauer was a founding member of the collective; The Body Politic had shared domestic space with the bookstore, and with Jearld, until mid-1974.
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2. See Other sources of information: Published material. One of the co-authors of With Downcast Gays, Andrew Hodges, later wrote the definitive biography of Alan Turing, WW II code- breaker and gay father of the computer. For more on Andrew, Alan Turing and With Downcast Gays, see: Ed Jackson: "Andrew and his tribe," TBP # 38 (Nov 1977), p 23; and Richard Summerbell: "The enigma of intelligence," TBP # 103 (May 1984), pp 28-30.

   See also Andrew Hodges's Home Page, containing a link to the full text of With Downcast Gays.
   (Full address: http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~woof/)
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3. See What we've published in the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives site.
   (Full address: http://www.clga.ca/About/publish/pubint.htm)
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