Viaud's novels never deal with homosexuality directly, but then neither does Oscar Wilde's work, and he is regularly held up as the first important figure in English-language gay literature. Aziyadé and My Brother Yves were obvious enough to foster rumors about Viaud's homosexuality in the popular press of the day. Others, like Iceland Fisherman, Ramuntcho, Judith Renaudin, and The Awakened, have had to wait longer for gay readings.

Read in chronological order, Viaud's novels present the story of a gay man working to come to an understanding of his feelings and who he is as a result of them, the first novelistic corpus in Western literature to do so. It would be a half-century before any other major novelist in English or French undertook something similar in so positive a fashion.

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In the nineteenth century gay and lesbian sexuality becomes a significant subject in French literature.

French semiotician Roland Barthes argued that the reintroduction of the sentimentality of love into sexuality would be the ultimate transgression.

The most famous actress of her time, Sarah Bernhardt scandalized and titillated Paris by wearing pants, taking men's roles in some of her plays, and having numerous love affairs, some with women.

An outspoken homosexual, Jean Cocteau was a prolific poet, novelist, critic, essayist, artist, and filmmaker.

Jean Genet's work has left a powerful legacy to post-modernity and remains a provocation to questions of gay identity.

André Gide, one of the premier French writers of the twentieth century, reflected his homosexuality in many of his numerous works.

The most important American novelist of the nineteenth century, Herman Melville reflects his homosexuality throughout his texts.

Count Robert de Montesquiou was a writer during France's Belle Epoque, but he is best remembered as a dandy and an aesthete, who inspired the literary creations of others.

Marcel Proust is the author of A la recherche du temps perdu, one of the major achievements of Modernism and a great gay novel.

Oscar Wilde is important both as an accomplished writer and as a symbolic figure who exemplified a way of being homosexual at a pivotal moment in the emergence of gay consciousness.