Racy, irreverent, and explicitly autobiographical, Rubyfruit Jungle was so popular in its initial release that its first publisher couldn’t keep up with demand. But Brown’s bawdy, wry coming-of-age romp was an altogether different beast than Highsmith’s understated love story. Rubyfruit Jungle wasn’t the first mainstream lesbian novel, or even the first mainstream lesbian novel to rack up impressive sales- Patricia Highsmith’s pseudonymous 1952 romance The Price of Salt (later retitled Carol) supposedly sold more than a million copies after it was released in paperback. When Rita Mae Brown’s first published novel hit bookstands in 1973, no one had read anything even remotely like it.
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