The first extensive study of gay and lesbian historical fiction, this book demonstrates how the highly popular sub-genre helps us understand gay and lesbian history. It shows not only why the sub-genre should be taken more seriously by historians but also how it implicitly works to ameliorate divisions between Christianity and homosexuality.

The first extensive study of gay and lesbian historical fiction, this book demonstrates how the highly popular sub-genre helps us understand gay and lesbian history. It shows not only why the sub-genre should be taken more seriously by historians but also how it implicitly works to ameliorate divisions between Christianity and homosexuality.

In Queer Fictions of the Past, Scott Bravmann explores the complexity of lesbian and gay engagement with history and considers how historical discourses animate the present. Characterising historical representations as dynamic conversations between then and now, he demonstrates their powerful role in constructing present identities, differences, politics, and communities. In particular, his is the first book to explore the ways in which lesbians and gay men have used history to define themselves as social, cultural, and political subjects.

Gay and Lesbian Literature Since World War II chronicles the multifaceted explosion of gay and lesbian writing that has taken place in the second half of the twentieth century. Encompassing a wide range of subject matter and a balance of gay and lesbian concerns, it includes work by established scholars as well as young theoreticians and archivists who have initiated new areas of investigation. The contributors'examinations of this rich literary period make it easy to view the half-century from 1948 to 1998 as the Queer Renaissance. Included in Gay and Lesbian Literature Since World War II are critical and social analyses of literary movements, novels, short fiction, periodicals, and poetry as well as a look at the challenges of establishing a repository for lesbian cultural history. Specific chapters in this groundbreaking work trace the development of gay poetry in America after World War II; examine how AIDS is represented in the first four Latino novels to deal with the subject matter; and chronicle the birth of lesbian-feminist publishing in the 1970s--showing how it created a flourishing gay literature in the 1980s and 1990s. Other chapters: outline the history of The Ladder from its initial publication in 1956 as the official vehicle of the Daughters of Bilitis to its final issue as a privately published literary magazine in 1972 examine Baldwin's 1962 novel Another Country and discuss the complicated critical history of this work and its relation to Baldwin's literary reputation--racial, sexual, and political factors are taken into account chart how Other Voices, Other Rooms, by Truman Capote, and The House of Breath, by William Goyen, reveal contradictory genderings of male homosexuality--suggesting an absence of a unified model of mid-twentieth-century male homosexuality argue that the 1976 novel Lover, by Bertha Harris, can be considered an exemplary novel within discussions of both postmodern fiction and lesbian theory. (The author calls for Harris to be added to the group of writers such as Wittig, Anzaldúa, Lorde, and Winterson, who are discussed within the context of a postmodern lesbian narrative.) examine the short fiction of Canadian lesbian novelist Jane Rule in an effort to shed light on lesbian creative practice in the homophobic climate of postwar North America argue for an understanding of Dale Peck's novel Martin and John as an attempt to link two apparently different processes of import to contemporary male subjects through examination of the novel alongside selected passages from Nietzsche and Freud focus on the pragmatic issues of developing and maintaining accessible research venues from which to cultivate the study of racial and cultural diversity in lesbian lives Document the history of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, one of the first lesbian-specific collections in the world, from its birth in the early 1970s to the present.

Novel Approaches to Lesbian History tells a tale about history and community in our allegedly post-identity era, examining contemporary novels that depict lesbian characters in recognizable historical situations. These imaginative stories provide a politically vital, speculative past in the face of a sketchy, problematic archive. Among the memorable characters in some 200 novels are pirates, cowgirls, and famous artists, ghosts and time travellers, immigrants and lovers. The best lesbian historical novels are conscientious and buoyant as they engage critical historiographical questions, but Novel Approaches also discusses the class and race biases that weigh on the genre. Some lesbian historical novels are based on archival evidence, others on conjecture or fantasy, but all convey the true fact that identity is elusive without a past, without which its future is nearly impossible.

Twenty-nine stories of lesbianlove and erotica from writers both new and established, edited by thebestselling author of...

DATES is an anthology of positive queer historical fiction, set throughout time and across the world. This is Volume 2! Watch a young trans woman grow into herself in 19th century Bengal, or a young woman from the 1920s Dominican Republic study to become a doctor. Or, if you're interested in a raucous good time, join two innkeepers as they stand their ground in Mesopotamia during Hammurabi's reign. In DATES 2, 35 amazing creators have come together to tell stories about personal, societal, and technological progress, creating a total of 218 pages of comics, 16 stunning color illustrations, and 2 short prose stories.

Critical analysis of the dramatisation of homosexuality in British fiction about the Second World War is noticeable only by its relative absence from the field. Whereas feminist literary criticism has broadened the canon of war fiction to include narratives by and about women, queer scholars have seldom focused on literary representations of homosexuality during the war. Natalie Marena Nobitz closes a glaring gap in the critical attention of four novels dealing with the disruption of gender roles and institutionalised heteronormativity: Walter Baxter's Look Down in Mercy (1951), Mary Renault's The Charioteer (1953), Sarah Waters' The Night Watch (2006) and Adam Fitzroy's Make Do and Mend (2012).

She thought she wanted the truth. Now she’d give anything to forget it. New OSS trainee Jenny Ryan is brimming with equal parts excitement and fear. She is one step closer to serving her country overseas, but when her ambition costs her dearly, she realizes the fight has come to her and love has turned to lies. OSS instructor Kathryn Hammond is no stranger to sacrifice. But when doing her job means sending the woman she loves into the churn of war, her devotion to duty is tested like never before. When shocking revelations and the cruel march of time threaten their love, will Kathryn and Jenny embrace the truth and find each other again before it’s too late? In the Shadow of Truth is the third book in this lesbian historical fiction series. If you like secrets, spies, and love against all odds, you'll love this emotionally sweeping love story. Buy In the Shadow of Truth and lose yourself in a page-turning night of desire and intrigue today! Note: As this is a series, reading the books in order is recommended.