Recent Glbtq Historical Fiction

Today, one of the most widely read glbtq historical fiction writers is Sarah Waters: her novels about cross-dressing and lesbian romances in Victorian England--Tipping the Velvet (1998), Affinity (1999), and Fingersmith (2002)--are so popular that two of them have been made into television mini-series. Similarly, Christopher Bram's Father of Frankenstein (1995), about the famous director James Whale became a highly acclaimed film: Gods and Monsters (1998), directed by William Condon and starring Ian McKellen.

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Some recent glbtq historical fiction novels explore the lives of major literary figures. Colm Tóibín's The Master (2004) focuses on Henry James; Monique Truong's The Book of Salt (2003), on Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and their Vietnamese cook; Nancy Freedman's Sappho: The Tenth Muse (1998), on the ancient Greek poet, Sappho. Mark Merlis's American Studies (1994) offers a fictionalized composite of literary critics Newton Arvin and F. O. Matthiessen. Merlis later published An Arrow's Flight (1998), which draws on Homer, Sophocles, and Virgil to re-tell the story of the Trojan War from an archly campy perspective.

In addition to Waters, many other novelists also explore glbtq history in England. David Leavitt's While England Sleeps (1995) presents a window on gay life in 1930s London. Emma Donoghue's Life Mask (2004) goes further back, to eighteenth-century London; Maria McCann's As Meat Loves Salt (2001) goes further still, to the seventeenth century.

Historical fiction novels treat a diverse array of glbtq subjects and settings. David Ebershoff's The Danish Girl: A Novel (2001) tells the story of Einar Weigener (Lili Elbe), the first man to undergo sex-change surgery. Judith Katz's The Escape Artist (1997) chronicles lesbian romances among Jewish immigrants in early twentieth-century Buenos Aires. John Williams's Clifford's Blues (1998) recounts the survival of a gay African-American jazz musician in a Nazi concentration camp.

Lisa See's Snow Flower and The Secret Fan (2005) tells of a nineteenth-century lesbian romance in China. Jamie O'Neill garnered critical acclaim for At Swim, Two Boys (2001), a gay romance set during the 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland. Earl Ganz's The Taos Truth Game (2006) recreates the relationship of novelist Myron Brinig and artist Cady Wells in the Taos, New Mexico artist colony dominated by Mabel Dodge Luhan in the 1930s.

These works of glbtq historical fiction represent just a fraction of the genre as a whole. While most of the works mentioned above are serious works of literature that have received critical as well as popular acclaim, one could also create an even more extensive list of popular glbtq historical romance novels. These typically range from subtly erotic to explicitly pornographic. While such novels can be just as formulaic as their heterosexual counterparts, many of them evince creativity and originality, and they continue to enjoy significant popularity among readers.

Conclusion

While certain glbtq historical fiction novels have been lauded by scholars, the genre as a whole remains underrepresented and underappreciated in glbtq scholarship. Nevertheless, the genre is popular and vibrant.

Whereas critics tend to focus unnecessarily on the bugbear of possible anachronisms, fans of these stories rightly find much to enjoy and appreciate in the genre. Glbtq historical fictions offer imaginative explorations of the past that are useful as well as enjoyable. They offer insights about the mysteries of sex and gender both in the past and in the present, illuminating these wonderfully murky and fascinating aspects of human experience.

The coming out experience is so important to gay men and lesbians that it is a primary focus of much of their literature.

Since World War II, the gay male novel has progressively flourished in England and especially in America.

From the great modernist writers of the 1920s and 1930s to the pulp writers of the 1950s to the lesbian writers of today, lesbian novelists have had a powerful impact on the lesbian community.

Appealing to glbtq people who enjoy romantic fantasy, the queer romance novel has recently come into its own.

One of the most fascinating men of all times, Alexander the Great was not only a great soldier and conqueror, he was also renowned for his love of Hephaestion.

One of the most gifted critics of American literature of the mid-twentieth century, Newton Arvin is today most remembered as a lover and mentor of Truman Capote and as the central figure in a 1960 scandal at Smith College.

Both male and female berdaches (or two-spirit persons), common among Native American tribal cultures, were characterized by gender variation sanctioned by supernatural dreams and visions.

Christopher Bram's novels address homosexual issues in a variety of periods and locales.

One of the first Jewish-American writers of his generation to write in English rather than Yiddish, Myron Brinig was also one of the first to create homosexual characters, though he remained publicly closeted all of his life.

Having earned critical acclaim for his work on Gods and Monsters (1998), Chicago (2002), and Kinsey (2004), screenwriter and film director William "Bill" Condon has become a leading American filmmaker.

A prolific writer of novels, plays, scholarly studies, and short stories, the lesbian author Emma Donoghue has emerged in recent years as a major contemporary literary figure.

Einar Wegener, a male Danish painter of some renown, became Lili Elbe, one of the world's first male-to-female transsexuals to undergo sexual reassignment surgery.

The love of the second-century Roman emperor Hadrian for the beautiful youth Antinous was exceptional not because the lovers were male, but because of its intensity.

Though closeted, Henry James had a number of intimate relations with young men, and his sexual orientation imbued his fiction.

Novelist and short story writer David Leavitt is one of the brightest stars of the gay literary world today.

Christopher Marlowe represents homoerotic situations and incidents in his plays and poems more frequently and more variously that any other major English Renaissance writer.

Critic F. O. Matthiessen was instrumental in the inclusion of gay writers in American literary history, and the exchange of letters between him and his lover Russell Cheney are among the most revealing gay male documents of the 1920s.

Arguably the finest Shakespearean actor of his generation, Ian McKellen was the first British subject to be knighted after publicly revealing his homosexuality, an event that proved more controversial within the gay community than in the mainstream.

Mark Merlis is a novelist of unusual imaginative and linguistic power who examines contemporary gay concerns through the filter of historical parallels.

The fiction of Isabel Miller explores and celebrates relationships between women, often across class lines.

After five novels which included suggested lesbianism, Mary Renault turned to open male homosexuality in the last nine, which included The Charioteer and eight celebrated historical novels set in ancient Greece.

Admired through the ages as one of the greatest lyric poets, the ancient Greek writer Sappho is today esteemed by lesbians around the world as the archetypal lesbian and their symbolic mother.

Novelist Tom Spanbauer probes the darker undercurrents of sexuality, race, and violence while simultaneously using his unique prose style to meditate on and question received notions of time, subjectivity, and history.

In addition to becoming--with Alice B. Toklas--half of an iconic lesbian couple, Gertrude Stein was an important innovator and transformer of the English language.

The recent novels of acclaimed Irish writer Colm Tóibín are astutely observed, unsentimental explorations of gay men trying to fit into an unwelcoming, and often openly hostile, world.

Virgil wrote approvingly of male love in many works, and his second eclogue became the most famous poem on that subject in Latin literature.

In her explorations of the damage done to the individual self by racism and sexism, Alice Walker views lesbianism as natural and freeing, an aid to self-knowledge and self-love.

Sarah Waters is the author of three lesbian novels as well as articles on lesbian and gay literature.

Director James Whale is best remembered for his stylish horror films and for being one of the few openly gay Hollywood figures of the 1930s.

The prize-winning novelist Marguerite Yourcenar reflected her own homosexuality in her works almost exclusively through male characters, most notably in Memoirs of Hadrian.