Lesbian and/or Feminist Literature and Writing

[Brown Eyes]

Amanda, your post came in same time as mine.

Motion carried unanimously - Tipping the Velvet is the best start. 

  Yeah, I think so.  It contains a good mixture of serious topics and fun.  And, it really does seem to be the novel by
Waters that focuses the most intently on the subject of being a lesbian... in addition to simply having lesbian characters present in a given narrative.

[sel]

Amanda, your post came in same time as mine.

Motion carried unanimously - Tipping the Velvet is the best start. 

Well girls,  Tipping the Velvet   then will be! 

My town library has an excellent selection of books in English, I will check there first, if it is not there I will either get it in London, all being well I planning to go there at the beginning of summer, or will order it through Amazon. I wouldn't want to read in Italian unless I found the English rather difficult. Funnily enough the one author who I find no easy at all to read in English is Annie Proulx, ended up reading the Shipping News in  Italian.

Amanda,

I will watch Aimée and Jaguar again as it has been a while since I watched it, and will get back to you with a list of questions.

[Lumière]

Okay, time to revive this thread. 
Amanda, you with me on this? 

[Lumière]

I recently ordered the following books, which I think are relevant to the subject of this thread...


Two Friends And Other 19th Century Lesbian Stories By American Women
by Susan Koppelman





[Amazon.com]
From Library Journal
This collection describes romantic attachments between women. The subject would not be extraordinary had the stories not been written in the late 19th century by some of the most respected American authors, including Mary Wilkins Freeman, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Sarah Orne Jewett. Lesbian love was not a conventional theme of 19th-century American literature and had to be muted in these stories. Thus, Phelps writes about a woman torn between being fulfilled in the spiritual realm after she leaves her body and being separated from her one true love, the woman mourning beside her casket, in "Since I Died." Writer/historian Koppelman (May Your Days Be Merry and Bright, NAL/Dial, 1991) carefully documents the professional and personal lives of these authors to put their work in literary and historical perspective. Most important, she decodes elements and symbols in the stories that were popular in the 19th century but might be unfamiliar to contemporary readers. This exceedingly important contribution to the study of women's history and lesbian literature in America is highly recommended for academic and large public libraries.
Lisa Nussbaum, Euclid P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

[Lumière]

A Century of Lesbian Erotica
by Susie Bright [et al.] , Susie Bright





[Chapters.ca]
Follow the development of lesbian erotic writing through the past hyperactive 100 years and have fun while you`re at it with this anthology. During the last century gay men and women have gained acceptance, freedom and rights on many different levels. At the same time erotic art in the gay community has flourished. With some of the fears of persecution off their shoulders, authors such as Susie Bright, Lizbeth Dusseau and Alison Tyler have felt free to openly explore their sexuality. The result is a collection of sensual, loving stories in A Century of Lesbian Erotica.   

[Lumière]

These next two books have been added to my wish list.

This one is of particular interest to me at the moment, since I am currently reading: 
Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb.  Amanda, I got it on your recommendation and it is a very interesting/informative read so far. 


Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present
by Neil Miller




[Amazon.com]

From Publishers Weekly
Bachelor lawyer Abraham Lincoln shared a bed with Illinois storekeeper Joshua Speed for three years starting in 1839. Because of its portrayal of a lesbian "Boston marriage," Henry James's The Bostonians was omitted from the 26-volume Scribner edition of his works published 1907-1917. The facts recounted in this chronicle of gay and lesbian history from Walt Whitman to the movie Philadelphia range from the trivial to the interesting to the revelatory, with chapter-length narratives on the Harlem Renaissance and Paris in the 1920s; the Oscar Wilde and Radclyffe Hall trials; the romantic relationships between Eleanor Roosevelt and reporter Lorena Hickok; homosexual entanglements among the Bloomsbury set; and Native American men who dressed and lived as women. Miller (Out in America) uses a conventional textbook style that at times infuriates with the simplicity of its tone. Although he uses fairly well-known primary source material, his excerpts are intriguing: A moving passage from Marvin Leibman's Coming Out Conservative illustrates his experience with discrimination in the military during WWII; Gide's autobiography recaptures his impression of meeting Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas at 25. This overview shows how some recent advances merely reprise gains made and lost in the past; while some past activities outdid anything in the present. Photos not seen by PW.  Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

[Lumière]

   
Golden Age of Lesbian Erotica: 1920-1940
by Victoria Brownworth (Editor)





[Amazon.com ]
Product Description
Lesbian erotica of the 1920s through the 1940s had a bold new cast to it. Unlike the tender and affectionate eroticism of the Victorian era with its naughty schoolgirls, convent antics and ladies-in-waiting, these 20th Century tales brought verisimilitude and fantasy together. While Radclyffe Hall was being prosecuted for obscenity for her depiction of "sapphics" and "inverts" in the classic lesbian novel *The Well of Loneliness,* her friend Natalie Barney was riding naked through the streets of Paris on horseback with her lover, the poet Renee Vivienne and Anais Nin were penning lurid and lustful tales of very bad girls while yearning for Henry Miller's sensual wife, June.


About the Author
Victoria A. Brownworth is the author of nine books, including the award-winning *Too Queer: Essays from a Radical Life* and editor of 14, including the award-winning *Night Bites: VampireTales of Blood and Lust. * A syndicated columnist, her work has appeared in numerous mainstream, queer and feminist publications, including the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Village Voice, the Advocate, OUT and Curve. Her erotic writing has appeared regularly in anthologies and magazines, and she is a former contributing writer to the lesbian sex magazines, *On Our Backs* and *Bad Attitude.*  ...

[Lumière]

That's all for now... More later.

 I've been thinking of doing a Beyond the Pale re-read at some point in the near future.
But I have quite a few books sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read, so it hasn't happened yet.

Amanda, got any good books on the go at the moment? 

[sel]

Hi Lumière and Amanda,

Never having read a lesbian themed story, a few posts back (and a few months back) I had asked you to suggest one. You both suggested Tipping the velvet.
I am back to report that I have read it and enjoyed it.
I never had, at least to my knowledge, had any female gay friends, knew hardly anything about the lesbian world, hence every page was a discovery.
I like Sarah Waters's writing style, some passages have been beautifully written. I won't say more as I feel I would inevitably give out spoilers.
Proud to say I read it in English.

[Brown Eyes]

Hi Lumière and Amanda,

Never having read a lesbian themed story, a few posts back (and a few months back) I had asked you to suggest one. You both suggested Tipping the velvet.
I am back to report that I have read it and enjoyed it.
I never had, at least to my knowledge, had any female gay friends, knew hardly anything about the lesbian world, hence every page was a discovery.
I like Sarah Waters's writing style, some passages have been beautifully written. I won't say more as I feel I would inevitably give out spoilers.
Proud to say I read it in English.

Hi Sel!!

Thanks for this report!  I'm very happy to hear that you enjoyed Tipping the Velvet.   I recommend watching the movie (actually a 3 part BBC mini series on DVD) if you get the chance, it's really fabulous and the source of a lot of the pictures that we've posted over on the Sarah Waters thread.