Rearguard Action

I remember hearing somewhere about all the hoo-ha that surrounded the release of Johanna Lindsey’s 1985 historical romance, Tender Is the Storm (Avon), but never sought additional information. Fortunately, Tim Hewitt, who I’ve described previously on this page as “a former tech writer and ‘web monkey,’ now an ardent paperback collector” in South Carolina, looked further into the controversy. As he explained in a Facebook post earlier this week:

This one created a storm upon publication with some distributors and bookstores thinking the cover was too much. (“Female nudity good; male nudity bad,” I guess.) Subsequent printings placed a big sticker, proclaiming the book to be a bestseller, over the fellow's nether regions to protect the delicate sensibilities of reader ladies (and puritanical indignation of others) everywhere. There are several variations of the “sticker” (apparently including a printing with a Speedo of sorts superimposed on the hero’s hips). I don't know, but some later shipped copies of the first printing may have gotten an actual sticker slapped on the cover.

The blog Sweet Savage Flame, which specializes in old-school romance novels, offers some further background on this standalone paperback, as well as a couple of examples of stickers used to conceal the buff gentleman’s derrière in later editions.

Oh, and if you think that cover art looks like the work of Robert McGinnis, you’re right! It was just one of the steamy Lindsey novels to which he lent his talents—several others of which likewise featured male subjects in states of dishabille.