Dr. Charles Silverstein & Edmund White — The Joy of Gay Sex (1977), signed by Edmund White

• Published: Crown Publishers, New York, 1977
• Contributors: Illustrated by Michael Leonard, Ian Beck and Julian Graddon
• Edition: First edition
• Binding: Publisher's cloth, dust jacket
• Pages: 240 pp.
• Dimensions: Octavo
• Language: English
• Signature: Signed by Edmund White on the title page.
• Condition: Fine in a very good dust jacket with a small loss to the front panel and a few small closed tears.

Published by Crown in 1977, The Joy of Gay Sex was the first frank, illustrated sex guide written for gay men, a gay-affirming answer to Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex. Alongside technique it gives as much space to coming out, couples, loneliness, ageing and the law.

Its authors gave it authority. Charles Silverstein, a psychologist, had argued before the American Psychiatric Association's nomenclature committee in 1973 for the removal of homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, and won. Edmund White, then the author of a single novel, brought a writer's ear. The drawings by Michael Leonard, Ian Beck and Julian Graddon give it its tenderness.

Later editions were rewritten for the age of AIDS, so the 1977 text is now a historical document: gay sexual culture at its most confident, described for readers who had rarely seen their lives written about without judgement. Signed by Edmund White, who died in 2025.