The Leather Boys one starts chatting him up. When Pete walks in they all recognise him and Reggie suddenly understands that Pete too is gay. He leaves. The book was published in 1961 under the pseudonym Eliot George—an inversion of the pen-name of the famous 19th century female author, Mary Ann Evans, who published as George Eliot. Freeman is credited under her own name in the film as the author of the screenplay based on the novel of "Eliot George". The original novel is explicit about the sexual relationship between the two male characters, and about the odds that the hero's wife is
Mary Ann Radcliffe in a respectable establishment. There is disagreement as to whether Mary Ann Radcliffe is the author of several Gothic novels attributed to her. Manfroné was one of the most popular Gothic novels of the early nineteenth century and was remembered warmly by William Makepeace Thackeray. “The Memoirs of Mrs Mary Ann Radcliffe; in Familiar Letters to Her Female Friend” complicates matters by making no reference to Mary Ann as a Gothic novelist. Other novels attributed to Mary Ann Radcliffe are Radzivil and The Fate of Velina de Guidova, both published in 1790 by William Lane at the Minerva Press. Radclife’s