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                                  Brandon House Books Brandon House was the original book publishing endeavour from the Milton Luros magazine empire known as American Art Enterprises. Luros was originally a graphic artist from New York City where he had a successful career going as an illustrator for pulp-ish men's adevnture magazines like MAN'S WORLD and TRUE DEATH. He left NYC for Los Angeles, California in the late 1950s and began exploring the increasingly popular field of nudist magazines and quickly built a profit-center in girlie magazines which allowed his business to expand expontentially so that by 1964, his enterprises included a printing plant, distribution network and the production of well over 50 different magazine titles. Throughout this time, he credited all his publishing endeavours with the lofty name "American Art." After success with nudist and later men's magazines, Luros turned to book publishing, and his racy paperback original fictions were issued under the name Brandon House ( followed soon after by a mostly non-fiction line named Barclay House). These hundreds of volumes published between 1964 and 1973, would later become the source of thousands of other book publications as the decades turned. American Art and Publishers Consultants were to become the copyright holder/names behind the subsequent publishing endeavours -- for in the mid-70s, Luros began selling off his adult industry interests to porn-world heavy Reuben Sturman with his shadowy ties to the mafia. After the 70s ownership transfer, dozens and dozens of booklines would be created from offices of American Art and Publishers Consultants -- each line offering a mix of new texts (from some interesting new writers), as well as (far in the majority) older Brandon and Barclay House texts, repackaged with new titles, misleading author credits, and of course, new cover design. The original Brandon House books were classic sleaze -- hard-boiled plots with twisted sexual elements in the storylines, lesbian and gay potboilers, suburban wife-swapping, and similar fare. Many of these were graced with the striking cover art of Fred Fixler -- whose lush but distracted females offered one last high in the world of Paperback Original cover art. Luros traveled the world and brought back both erotic texts and erotic art which he shared through the creation of a separate bookline known as Brandon House Library Editions -- with high production values ensuring their crisp white pages and durable bindings would survive for generations (and they have). While Brandon House Library issued classics of erotic writing, Luros' Essex House was founded in 1968 as a haven for contemporary writers of erotica and sexual fantasy. This was America's answer to Maurice Girodias' famed Olympia Press. Under Brian Kirby's direction, Essex House contracted with experimental writers and poets to deliver a heady hippie-style series of outrageous and sometimes successful novels. While Brandon House continued on in its publishing endeavours with new titles appearing throughout the early 1970s, Luros began negotiations to sell his empire and by 1976, there were no more original texts appearing under the Brandon House imprint. See below for a selection of the American Art/Publisher's Consultants adult booklines and click further to see the books themselves. Be sure to cross-check the "Writers" and "Artists" and "Themes" areas also! |
Brandon House Books began appearing in 1965, seven years after Milton Luros' American Art magazines engaged Hefner's PLAYBOY and the East-coast men's magazines and claimed victory on their own terms, establishing Parliament News as the leading distributor of sleaze and "adult" materials West of the Mississippi. Using the Parliament News Distrbution network, Brandon House books appeared wherever sleaze was sold, but generally did not make it to the shelves of any "legit" newsracks, drugstores, or bookstores. This explains the rarity of Brandon House paperbacks among vintage paperback collector/dealers. Also, be sure to check out the related booklines, Brandon House Library, Essex House and Barclay books. Some familiar names will appear here and there, such as Richard E. Geis, John Cleve, Stanley Curson, Paul Canto, Russell Trainer, and others. |
Following on the heels of the success of the pirating of the Olympia Press' CANDY, came the Brandon House Library series, bringing the highest of production values to the paperback publishing world -- sturdy cover stock and acid-free interior pages not seen since the original Pocket Book paperback series issued before World War II. The Brandon House Library series was edited by poet, book collector and musician Brian Kirby who traveled the world acquiring texts of "classic" erotica. Some of these were the heavily circulated (i.e., "pirated") books from the public domain realm, but some were indeed exclusive appearing only in the Brandon House Library Editions series. |
Essex House Library stands as perhaps the high-water mark of subversive publishing emerging from the world of erotica publishing in the late 1960s. Working overtime as both Brandon House Library's and Essex House Library's editor, Brian Kirby solicited and assigned book contracts to underground literary voices as far reaching as Charles Bukowski, Alice Ramirez, P.J. Farmer, and weven had some negotiations with Jim Morrison of THE DOORS. The intention was to create a literary equivalent to the revolutionary breakthroughs in expression which were occuring in the other arts, rock music, avant-garde theater, painting and sculpture and filmmaking. Unfortunately the Essex House line was discontinued, some say owing to office politics within American Art, while officially the decision was based on poor sales. Texts still in the Essex House pipeline became regular (now quite rare) Brandon House offerings -- most notably P.J. Famer's LOVE SONG and David Meltzer's STAR.. |
Barclay House Books was initially the "non-fiction" branch of the Brandon House publishing tree -- issuing volume after volume of "sociological study," "psychological study," and other "investigations" into sexuality in then-contemporary America. Obviously, the texts for these "studies" were in fact fictional works authored by the same authors penning the Brandon House (as well as other sleaze publishers') books. The effort was a baldly apparent attempt to play by the rules of recent legal decisions defining pornographic works as those being "without redeeming social importance. Each and every Barclay House title announced itself as a model of socially-relevant publishing. As time went by, the studies became more and more niche-oriented with titles that seemed to appeal to rather specific groups of social scientists, such as "ANALISM AMONG THE POOR," and "HOT FANNY GIRLS." Eventually (when "the coast was clear"), Barclay House began publishing plainly fictional works as well -- however maintaining their standard tagline "a Barclay House Non-Fiction." |
  Emerging with the collapse of censorship and legal loopholes due to untraceable and overseas copyrights, numerous publishers made hay while they could by importing (and sometime stealing) manuscripts from other pornographers who were legally hamstrung to act on infringement claims. With these prevailing conditions, the 60s saw a spring of classic erotica flow forth in cheap and inocuous paperback editions -- Continental Classics, Classic Editions, and a slew of minor minimalist productions ... evocative of the original Obelisk Press, Olympia Press, and other verbotten European porn presses. |
 For those readers who did need wish to shop at adult book stores, a handful of publishers began producing "erotica" with upscale glossy photo covers from writers of perhaps more restraint and certainly more literary veneer. Pandora, Pinnacle, Blue Moon, Masquerade and others are all collected here. |
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