Lesbian American Fiction before WWII
Explore a curated list of groundbreaking American lesbian fiction books published before WWII. Discover early LGBTQ+ literature and iconic works that shaped queer storytelling in the 20th century.
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Three Lives
by Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein, as a college student at Radcliffe and a medical student at Johns Hopkins Medical School, was a privileged woman, but she was surrounded by women who were trapped by poverty, class, and race into lives that offered little choice. Her portraits of Anna and Lena are examples of realistic depictions of immigrant women who had no occupational choice but to become domestic workers. This collection of documents from the history of women's suffrage, medical history, modernist art, and literature enables readers to see how radical Stein's subject was.
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Ladies Almanack
by Djuna Barnes
Barnes's affectionate lampoon of the expatriate lesbian community in Paris was privately printed in 1928. Arranged by month, it records the life and loves of Dame Evangeline Musset (modeled after salon hostess Natalie Barney) in a robust style taken from Shakespeare and Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, and is illustrated throughout with Barnes's own drawings. This new edition is a facsimile of the 1928 edition with the addition of an afterword providing details on the book's origins and a key to its real-life models.
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Bryher
by Bryher
"Highly readable. ... Offers rare insights into gay life in the first quarter of the twentieth century."â€" Diana Collecott, University of Durham, author of H.D. and Sapphic Modernism. Bryher (born Annie Winifred Ellerman) is perhaps best known today as the lifelong partner of the poet H.D. She was, however, a central figure in modernist and avant-garde cultural experimentation in the early twentieth century; a prolific producer of poetry, novels, autobiography, and criticism; and an intimate and patron of such modernist artists as Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore, and Dorothy Richardson. Bryher's own path-breaking writing has remained largely neglected, long out of print, and inaccessible to those interested in her oeuvre. Now, for the first time since their original publication in the early 1920s, two of Bryher's pioneering works of fictionalized autobiography, titled Development and Two Selves, are reprinted in one volume for a new audience of readers, scholars, and critics. Blending poetry, prose, and autobiographical details, Development and Two Selves together constitute a compelling bildungsroman that is among the first ever to follow a young woman's process of coming out. Through the fictionalized character Nancy, the novels trace Bryher's life through her childhood and young adulthood, giving the reader an account of the development of a unique lesbian, feminist, and modernist consciousness. Development and Two Selves recover significant work by one of the first experimenters of the modernist movement and are a welcome reintroduction of the enigmatic Bryher. "Bryher's novels have a strong place in the history of lesbian and transgendered writing. This volume is sure to be a useful tool for modernist studies, women's studies, and queer, gay, and lesbian studies."--Susan Stanford Friedman, University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter. Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman) was a poet, novelist, critic, patron, and editor of the film journal Close Up and the literary magazine Life and Letters Today. Joanne Winning is lecturer in twentieth-century literature at the School of Humanities and Cultural Studies, Middlesex University, London
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HERmione
by Hilda Doolittle
An autobiographical novel tells of a college girl driven to a nervous breakdown by conflicting aspects of her personality.
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Nightwood
by Djuna Barnes
Nightwood is the story of Robin Vote and those she destroys: her husband "Baron" Felix Volkbein and their child Guido, and the two women who love her, Nora Flood and Jenny Petherbridge. Commenting on them all is Doctor Matthew O'Connor, whose outlandish monologues elevate their romantic losses to the level of Elizabethan tragedy.
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Quicksand and Passing
by Nella Larsen
Two novels of 1920s Harlem describe Helga Crane's search for freedom and personal expression, and Irene's friendship with Clare, who attempts to pass for white.
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Work
by Louisa May Alcott
A story about a nineteenth-century woman’s search for a meaningful life through work outside the family sphere, Work is at once Alcott’s exploration of her personal challenges and a social critique of America. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Two Friends and Other 19th-century American Lesbian Stories
by Various
Comprising eleven short stories by such 19th-century American writers as Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, and Mary E. Wilkins, this breakthrough anthology celebrates a rich historical tradition in American lesbian literature. A stunning collection, this book is a milestone for anyone interested in literary history as well as gay and women's studies.