Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin

Overview

Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin is the 1987 English-language edition of Susanne Bösche's Danish photo-picture book about a child living with her father and his male partner. Its public importance comes from both form and controversy. The book uses staged photographic domesticity rather than drawn fantasy or explanatory classroom scenes, making ordinary household life its main evidence. In Britain, the title became entangled in the political history that led to Section 28, the 1988 law restricting local authorities from promoting homosexuality. The collection item therefore connects children's literature, gay-parent representation, translation, visual realism, and parliamentary debate in a way few picture books do. It is one of the sample's clearest examples of a small book entering national politics.^[1][2][3][4]

Danish Original And English Edition

The work began as the Danish Mette bor hos Morten og Erik before appearing in English as Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin. That translation trail matters because the book's later political life depended on movement across language, place, and institutional setting. Library records, museum records, and archive descriptions let the record show the work as an object that traveled: from Danish sex-education and family-representation contexts into British debates over children's access to information about gay family life. The translation also changed its institutional audience and risk.^[5][1][2]

Photographic Domesticity

Unlike many later picture books, Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin relies on photographs. That choice gives the book a documentary pressure: rooms, adults, clothes, meals, and bodies are presented as evidence of ordinary life. The form helps explain both the book's usefulness and the anxiety it provoked. A drawn story can be read as fantasy; a photographed household can look like instruction, testimony, or public proof. For collection visitors, the photographs make domestic life and political controversy difficult to separate.^[2][6][7]

Family Language

The story's family language is direct but restrained. Jenny lives with her father and his partner, and the book makes their household visible through routines rather than melodrama. That plainness links it to Daddy's Roommate and Heather Has Two Mommies, but the photographic mode makes the effect different. The object helps the collection show how early LGBTQ-family books used several strategies: naming, domestic repetition, child perspective, and visual realism. Each strategy answered the same question: how can a child reader recognize a family that public culture often refuses to name?^[1][3][8]

From Teacher Centre To Parliament

The book's British afterlife is inseparable from institutional circulation. Archive and parliamentary sources connect the title to disputes over local authority materials and the political conditions that produced Section 28. This gives the item a rare documentary path from children's book to legislative debate. The interpretation should not reduce that history to a single scandal; it should show how a small translated photo-book became evidence within a larger argument over schools, local government, sexuality, and public authority. Its small format and large political afterlife belong together.^[9][10][11]

Timeline

1. 1981Danish originalMette bor hos Morten og Erik appeared in Denmark.^[5][17]
2. 1983English editionGay Men's Press published Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin in English translation.^[1][2]
3. 1986Teacher-resource controversyThe book was drawn into British debate over teacher resources and local education authority materials.^[9][3]
4. 1987Commons debateHansard records show parliamentary debate over local government, education, and homosexuality in the climate surrounding the book.^[10][11]
5. 1988Section 28 enactedSection 28 entered the Local Government Act 1988.^[4][12]
6. 2000Public reconsiderationGuardian and parliamentary accounts revisited the book's place in the Section 28 story.^[3][18]
7. 2003Repeal in England and WalesLater historical accounts trace the repeal and afterlife of Section 28 in England and Wales.^[13][12]
8. 2021Renewed visibilityArchival writing and the Danish digital reissue made the book newly accessible as a historical object.^[17][6]

Publication Trail

The title's path runs from Danish original to English translation and later archival recovery.

Citation

Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin. Susanne Bösche; photographs by Andreas Hansen; translated by Louis Mackay. Gay Men's Press, 1983. Tarpey-Schwed LGBT Families Children's Book Special Collection, Mechanics' Institute. Collection ID: KB-131.

Sources

Image from London Museum.

1. Open Library work record for Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin · library
2. London Museum collection record for Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin · museum
3. The Guardian feature on Susanne Bosche and Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin · news
4. Local Government Act 1988, Section 28 as enacted · law
5. Bibliotek.dk record for Mette bor hos Morten og Erik · library
6. Newcastle University Special Collections feature on Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin · archive
7. Senate House Library exhibition entry for Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin · exhibition
8. Simpson, Silence and absence in political discourse on Section 28 and children's literature · scholarship
9. The National Archives on the origins of Section 28 · archive
10. Hansard Commons debate, 8 May 1987 · parliamentary
11. Hansard Commons debate, 15 December 1987 · parliamentary
12. House of Commons Library briefing on Section 28 · parliamentary
13. The National Archives on the impact, fightback, and repeal of Section 28 · archive
14. The Guardian review essay on Gay Men's Press · news
15. Gay Men's Press publications full list · archive
16. Bishopsgate Institute collection record for Martin Humphries and Gay Men's Press · archive
17. Google Books record for the 2021 Danish digital edition · library
18. Hansard Lords debate, 7 February 2000 · parliamentary
19. State Library of New South Wales feature on Young, Gay and Proud · archive
20. Hansard Lords debate, 16 February 1988 · parliamentary
21. Davis, Gay Sex Kits: Lessons in British sex education history · scholarship
22. ABAA bookseller record for Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin · bookseller