Conventional wisdom holds that same-sex marriage is a purely modern innovation, a concept born of an overtly modern lifestyle that was unheard of in nineteenth century America. But as Rachel Hope Cleves demonstrates in this eye-opening book, same-sex marriage is hardly new. Born in 1777, Charity Bryant was raised in Massachusetts. A brilliant and strong-willed woman with a clear attraction for her own sex, Charity found herself banished from her family home at age twenty. She spent the next decade of her life traveling throughout Massachusetts, working as a teacher, making intimate female friends, and becoming the subject of gossip wherever she lived. At age twenty-nine, still defiantly single, Charity visited friends in Weybridge, Vermont. There she met a pious and studious young woman named Sylvia Drake. The two soon became so inseparable that Charity decided to rent rooms in Weybridge. In 1809, they moved into their own home together, and over the years, came to be recognized, essentially, as a married couple. Revered by their community, Charity and Sylvia operated a tailor shop employing many local women, served as guiding lights within their church, and participated in raising their many nieces and nephews. Charity and Sylvia is the intimate history of their extraordinary forty-four year union. Drawing on an array of original documents including diaries, letters, and poetry, Cleves traces their lives in sharp detail. Providing an illuminating glimpse into a relationship that turns conventional notions of same-sex marriage on their head, and reveals early America to be a place both more diverse and more accommodating than modern society might imagine, Charity and Sylvia is a significant contribution to our limited knowledge of LGBT history in early America.

Sylvia, daughter of the Duke of Belham, is bored with the various young men she meets at Lady Lamborne's masked ball. At last she escapes their attentions and makes her way into the cool, moonlit garden, where she encounters a masked stranger. The following morning, Sylvia's father reveals that he has amassed such debts from his gambling that the family can no longer maintain their high profile London life. They must return to Castle Belham and Sylvia realises that she will never see her mystery stranger again. At Castle Belham, Count Von Brauer enters their lives. In time, the Duke loses a vast sum of money to him at a gathering. The Count offers to overlook the debt in return for Sylvia's hand in marriage. At first, Sylvia refuses, but when the Duke suffers a nervous collapse, her resistence crumbles. Only a stranger from the past can rescue her from her nightmare... only the stars in the sky can point the way.

This book explores the history of marriage and marriage-like relationships across five continents from the seventeenth century to the present day. Across fourteen chapters, leading marriage scholars examine how the methodologies from the new history of emotions contribute to our understanding of marriage, seeking to uncover not only personal feeling but also the political and social implications of emotion. They highlight how marriage as an institution has been shaped not just by law and society but also by individual and community choices, desires and emotional values. Importantly, they also emphasize how the history of non-traditional and same-sex relationships and their emotions have long played an important role in determining the nature of marriage as an institution and emotional union. In doing so, this collection allows us to rethink both the past and present of marriage, destabilizing a story of a stable institution and opening it up as a site of contest, debate and feeling.

THE COMPLETE 9-BOOK SET OF THE BESTSELLING FANTASY SERIES BY C.J. ARCHER. A lush, sweeping romantic gothic delight. Enter the dark and dangerous world of Victorian England and Freak House, where nothing is as it seems and everyone has secrets. Full of unforgettable characters, quirky humor, fast action, and delicious romance, C.J. Archer's Freak House Series is now available as an exclusive boxed set. Get all 3 trilogies that make up the FREAK HOUSE series at a lower price than buying them individually! THE 1ST FREAK HOUSE TRILOGY (Contains THE WRONG GIRL, PLAYING WITH FIRE, HEART BURN): It's customary for Gothic romance novels to include a mysterious girl locked in the attic. Hannah Smith just wishes she wasn't that girl. As a narcoleptic and the companion to an earl's daughter with a strange affliction of her own, Hannah knows she's lucky to have a roof over her head and food in her belly when so many orphans starve on the streets. Yet freedom is something Hannah longs for. She did not, however, want her freedom to arrive in the form of kidnapping. Taken by handsome Jack Langley to a place known as Freak House, she finds herself under the same roof as a mad scientist, his niece, a mute servant and Jack, a fire starter with a mysterious past. They assure Hannah she is not a prisoner and that they want to help her. The problem is, they think she's the earl's daughter. What will they do when they discover they took the wrong girl? THE 2ND FREAK HOUSE TRILOGY (Contains THE MEMORY KEEPER, SEARED WITH SCARS, EDGE OF DARKNESS): Charity Evans wants nothing more than to leave her troubled past behind and start afresh. The teacher at a London school for orphans is encouraged to have her memories blocked by hypnotist Samuel Gladstone, but when they experience visions with an unknown third person, they realize the past can never be truly erased. Now her past is returning to haunt Charity all over again. Samuel is determined to help her, but how can a woman who trusts no man trust a hypnotist? And what dark secrets changed the charming gentleman into a desperate one who'll do anything to keep those secrets buried? THE 3RD FREAK HOUSE TRILOGY (Contains GHOST GIRL, BANISHED, MY SOUL TO TAKE): Cara Moreau is dying from a supernatural curse. Her only chance of survival lies with the warrior, an enigmatic man who comes from a realm "in between." Quin St. Clair lived hundreds of years ago, but now exists solely to protect the world he once called home. That's all he will tell Cara, the woman he must keep alive by remaining close to her. Very close. But Cara is determined to discover more answers as she grows to like her warrior. While they search for the book of spells and the cure contained within its pages, their feelings for one another can no longer be denied. But what will happen when Cara is cured and Quin's assignment is complete? And can she trust this mysterious man with the book if they find it? As friends and family from the previous Freak House novels help them, and old and new foes vie for power, Quin and Cara must not allow their feelings to get in the way of their task. Or Cara's life, and Quin's afterlife, may be cut short. What readers are saying about the Freak House books: "This is one of my favourite books I've read this year... I can't praise it enough... The real stand out for this was the writing and the character voice." - The Moonlight Library "The writing in The Wrong Girl was beautiful. There were so many quotes that I wanted to write down, and keep... The world building, and the plot drew me in from the get go, and didn't falter until the last sentence." - Books For A Delicate Eternity "This was one fantastic read! A really fascinating story which I couldn't put down, so this is easily a 5 stars." - Tea Party Princess KEYWORDS: historical fantasy, gothic, historical romance, historical paranormal romance, alternate history, gothic romance, shifters, clean paranormal, clean romance, young adult book, teen book, book appropriate for teens, bestselling series, slow burn romance, box set bargain

An infestation of evil ghosts is too much for spirit medium Cara to handle alone. She summons Quin, and together they attempt to discover where the ghosts came from, and why they refuse to leave this realm. To protect the residents, Cara and Quin must work closely together, leading to old feelings resurfacing between them. But as Cara learns about Quin's mysterious past, she has more answers than questions.

As a young girl, Sylvia Hatchell longed to play little league baseball and, later, high-school basketball, but both were closed to her because she was a girl. In college, her world shifted when she discovered a passion for coaching that would lead her to become a Naismith Hall of Fame coach of women's basketball at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In this book, Coach Hatchell's life story unfolds against the backdrop of Title IX and women's struggle for equal opportunities in athletics. She celebrates triumphs (such as winning the 1994 NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Tournament) and weathers sadness and failure (such as the loss of her parents, surviving cancer, and being forced to resign from her dream job in 2019).

For centuries, human history has been shaped by politics, power, and war - but what about love? Mark Antony's love for Cleopatra led to war between Rome and Egypt; Emperor Xuanzang of Tang relinquished the Mandate of Heaven for Yang Guifei; and the English Reformation was borne out of Henry VIII's passion for Anne Boleyn. Over the centuries since, these great loves - and many others - have been celebrated, recorded, and memorialized to stand alongside the annals of war, peace, and politics that have moulded today's world. Great Loves celebrates history's most famous romances - the joyful, the tragic, and the epic - in one stunning visual guide, showing that, regardless of age, race, gender, or orientation, love has always been a force to be reckoned with. This boldly illustrated title presents a diverse range of stories from around the world, including many relationships that defied the conventions of their day, and features romantic quotes from personal correspondence, poetry, and fiction.

This volume draws together contributions containing original research on a number of linguistic and semiotic understandings of gender in the context of current debates about gender non-conforming people and diverse ways of ‘doing’ masculinities. It contests the constraints, stereotypes, and prejudices concerning gender nonconformity by sparking academic inquiry, possibly leading to social change. The book explores various gender non-conforming tropes as they apply either to same-sex related desires, identities, and practices or to other dimensions of gender non-normative experiences, such as weak or socially-perceived as unacceptable representations of manliness. The volume demonstrates that language matters in the everyday experience of gender diversity beyond traditional gender binarism. By modelling some of the approaches that are now being explored in linguistic and gender studies and by addressing language use over a range of diamesic, diastratic and diatopic contexts, all contributors here discuss cogent issues in language and gender.

Incorporating HC 540-i-v, session 2006-07

A continuation of Josephine Donovan's exploration of American women's literary traditions, begun with New England Local Color Literature: A Women's Tradition, which treats the nineteenth-century realists, this work analyzes the writing of major women writers of the early twentieth century&—Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Ellen Glasgow. The author sees the Demeter-Persephone myth as central to these writers' thematics, but interprets the myth in terms of the historical transitions taking place in turn-of-the-century America. Donovan focuses on the changing relationship between mothers and daughters&—in particular upon the &"new women's&" rebellion against the traditional women's culture of their nineteenth-century mothers (both literary and literal). An introductory chapter traces the male-supremacist ideologies that formed the intellectual climate in which these women wrote. Reorienting Wharton, Cather, and Glasgow within women's literary traditions produces major reinterpretations of their works, including such masterpieces as Ethan Frome, Summer, My Antonia, Barren Ground, and others.