Queer (1985) Signed First Edition Reference

Queer is William S. Burroughs’s most emotionally vulnerable work — a companion piece to Junky, written in the early 1950s but suppressed for three decades due to its frank depiction of homosexual desire. Published by Viking in 1985, it follows William Lee through Mexico City as he pursues Eugene Allerton, a younger man whose indifference drives Lee to increasingly desperate acts of courtship and self-exposure.

The Book

Where Junky was cool and detached — Burroughs the reporter, documenting addiction with clinical precision — Queer is raw and exposed. Lee’s desire for Allerton is rendered with an aching vulnerability that is entirely unlike Burroughs’s usual sardonic tone. The book reveals the emotional interior that Burroughs spent most of his career concealing behind irony, cut-up technique, and deliberately shocking content.

Burroughs wrote the book in the early 1950s, shortly after Junky, but withdrew it from publication — ostensibly because of its explicit homosexual content, but also, as he later acknowledged, because its emotional honesty made him uncomfortable. The 1985 publication, with Burroughs’s extraordinary introduction (in which he connects the book to Joan Vollmer’s death), finally brought this essential piece of the Burroughs puzzle to light.

First Edition Identification

Publisher: Viking Press, New York Publication date: 1985

Signed Copy Market Values

• Signed first edition, fine/fine: $200–$500
• Inscribed copies: $300–$700
• Unsigned first edition, fine/fine: $30–$75

Queer is important both as a literary work and as a biographical document. The introduction alone — one of Burroughs’s most honest and painful pieces of writing — makes the book essential for any serious Burroughs collection.