Penthouse Letters and other "written" publications

[MaxBat]

Hey there,

I'm looking for some direction here, and hoping some of the more "literary" minded people on the forum can help me. I have an interest in written porn from the 1970-90s and particularly in PH Letters, Variations and Forum.

I'm especially interested in the 1980s versions, because back then I was just getting started in my writing and submitted a number of letters to PH. Not all were published, but a few were and some more than once (back then PH was known to duplicate its "letters" in different publications).

(As some of you may be aware, PH changed its editorial policy in (I think) the 1990s. Before then, almost everything but child porn was fair game. A number of taboos were addressed, including incest and other strange (often hilarious) things. After the change, the only taboo allowed was "adultery" and, even then, "consensual adultery" is the the encouraged taboo. If you read Letters today, you'll see it's quite a different publication.)

For the past year or so, I've searched the 'net without success, looking for text or image scans of these publications from the 1980s. I can find nothing. Not a single scanned page. Is there not an archive from of pulp publications from the 70s and 80s that has these tucked away? Am I missing something obvious?

I've even searched the forum here, without success. There are number of threads for PH pictures, but none for PH "Letters" - unless I've missed it.

Does anyone know of a source for these?

MB

[davidsai]

I am in the same conundrum have not been able to fnd anything prior to 2008 not to mention 1980 and 90'
i wish us good luck

[Pepper II]

Some cover scans can be found here: http://www.alta-glamour.com/cgi-bin/glam/process.html Just type penthouse letters into the search box.

[metafemme]

I just signed up for an account on this forum hoping that someone would have scanned some of these. I miss the old Letters, Forum and Variations, since as others have mentioned, it was far more open-minded. I did find a site some years ago which claims to sell both vintage copies, and scans, but I didn't want to risk the cash on them. However, I really find I miss these mags and I'd be only too willing to post them here if i did end up purchasing them. anyone interested in possibly splitting up the purchasing?

http://wonderclub.com/magazines/adul...d=75&year=1985

[Gbnf]

Check Ebay; much cheaper, though mostly new issues...

[Schwenck]

Being a reader, I always read the 'Reader's Letters' section.
In my first Penthouse (Late 60's) I was fascinated by quite a lot of correspondence about spanking. This was my first realisation that this was a reasonably popular practice.

[scorpion_111151]

Didn't Forum also have a spin-off consisting entirely of erotic short stories?

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by scorpion_111151

Didn't Forum also have a spin-off consisting entirely of erotic short stories?

There were at least two spin offs, both published in a digest/paperback book format, "Forum Letters" and "Variations" -- the latter being more oriented to kink material, as that might be defined in the '80s. Some of the other publications did similar booklet formats-- I think Gallery did something similar. These pocket sized formats were popular with the newsstands -- smaller than a magazine. And they were cheap to produce -- they reused photos from the magazine, and writers come cheap.

[NortonSapp]

I bought a couple of the Penthouse Letters magazines back in the 80s, it would be nice to find a few scanned one here, especially the UK copies, just to reignite the memories. Unfortunately my mags were lost, I so wish I had kept them.