Dick and Reggie are ‘leather boys’: working-class London teens with an affinity for leather jackets and motorcycles who become friends through their involvement in a gang. For Dick, the money he gets from the gang’s thefts helps to support his ailing grandmother; for Reggie, membership in the gang provides relief from an unhappy home life and a loveless marriage.

When Reggie decides to leave his unfaithful wife and move in with Dick, the two soon discover their feelings for each other are much stronger than mere friendship. As they make plans for their future together, will they find the happiness they seek, or is their love doomed to end in tragedy?

The first novel to offer an authentic portrayal of love between ordinary, working-class young men, Gillian Freeman’s The Leather Boys is a groundbreaking classic of gay fiction that remains moving and compelling today. Freeman’s novel and its 1964 film adaptation played a vital part in liberalising British attitudes towards homosexuality.

Born in London, Gillian Freeman graduated in English Language and Literature from the University of Reading in 1951. One of her best known books was the 1961 novel The Leather Boys (published under the pseudonym Eliot George, a reference to the writer George Eliot. Her non-fiction book The Undergrowth of Literature (1967), was a pioneering study of pornography. Gillian Freeman died in 2019.

Outsider Classics is Dead Ink’s resurrection ground for the strange, the silenced, and the outcast. This series exhumes lost literary voices that were ahead of their time to restore them to the cult status they always deserved. From forgotten masterpieces to once-censored provocations, each title is a reaction against the canon curated for readers looking to stray into the margins.