BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GAY AND LESBIAN HISTORY Compiled by Rictor Norton
INDEX: [General History] [Anthologies] [Lesbian: General] [Pre-Modern Lesbian] [Modern Lesbian] [Literary History] [Language] [Art & Film] [Theory] [Famous Homosexuals] [Anthropology] [Ancient] [Medieval] [Early Modern] [Renaissance] [English Early Modern] [German] [Dutch] [French] [Spain & Portugal] [Other European] [Pre-Modern American] [Modern American] [China, India and Japan] [Middle East] [Latin America] [Africa] [Colonial and Non-European]
Updated 25 May 2009

English Modern History

Abrams, Brett L.
Hollywood Bohemians: Transgressive Sexuality and the Selling of the Movieland Dream. 2008.
Between 1917 and 1941, Hollywood studios, gossip columnists and novelists featured an unprecedented number of homosexuals, cross-dressers, and adulterers in their depictions of the glamorous Hollywood lifestyle. Actress Greta Garbo defined herself as the ultimate serial bachelorette. Screenwriter Mercedes De Acosta engaged in numerous lesbian relationships with the Hollywood elite. And countless homosexual designers brazenly picked up men in the hottest Hollywood nightclubs. Hollywood’s image grew as a place of sexual abandon. This book demonstrates how studios and the media used images of these sexually adventurous characters to promote the industry and appeal to the prurient interests of their audiences.
Adut, Ari
"A theory of scandal: Victorians, homosexuality, and the fall of Oscar Wilde", American Journal of Sociology, 111:1 (2005), 213-48.
Aldrich, Robert
Colonialism and Homosexuality. 2003.
Aronson, Theo
Prince Eddy and the Homosexual Underworld. London: John Murray, 1994.
Brady, Sean
Masculinity and Male Homosexuality in Britain, 1861-1913 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
This book is part of a new generation of historical research that challenges prevailing arguments for the medical and legal construction of male homosexual identities in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain.
Burton, Peter
Amongst the Aliens: Some aspects of a gay life. Millivres Books, 1995. Interviews etc, recording gay social history of the past 30 years. Sections on gay slang and behaviour in clubs etc.
Burton, Peter
Parallel Lives. 1985.
Charbonnier-Lambert, Martine
"Walter Pater, Simeon Solomon et Oscar Browning: l’homosexualité avant 1885 d’un point de vue culturel, juridique et social", Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens, 55 (2002), 265-75. Publisher: Université Paul-Valéry.
Chester, Lewis, Leitch, David and Simpson, Colin
The Cleveland Street Affair. 1977.
Croft-Cooke, Rupert
The Unrecorded Life of Oscar Wilde. New York: David McKay, 1972. Including the queer underworld.
Cocks, Harry G.
"Calamus in Bolton: Spirituality and Homosexual Desire in Late Victorian England," Gender and History, 13, 2 (August 2001): 191-223.
Cocks, Harry
"Homosexuality between men in Britain since the eighteenth century", History Compass, 5:3 (2007), 865-89.
Cocks, Harry G.
"Homosexuality in Europe, 1914-2004", in Jay Winter and John Merriman (eds), Encyclopedia of Europe: 1914-2004 (Gale, 2005).
Cocks, Harry G.
Nameless Offences: Homosexual Desire in the 19th Century. I.B. Tauris, 2003.
Cocks, Harry G.
"Making the Sodomite Speak: Voices of the Accused in English Sodomy Trials, c.1800-1898", Gender and History (forthcoming 2004/5)
Cocks, Harry G.
"Naughty Narrative Nineties: Sex, Scandal and Representation in the fin de siecle," Journal of British Studies, October, 2002.
Cocks, Harry G.
"Safeguarding Civility: Sodomy, Class, and the Limits of Moral Reform in Early 19th Century England", (forthcoming)
Cocks, Harry G.
"Trials of character: The use of character evidence in Victorian sodomy trials," in Rose Melikan (ed.), Domestic and International Trials, 1700-2000, The Trial in History Vol. II, Manchester University Press, 2003, pp. 36-53.
Cocks, Harry G.
"'Sporty' Girls and 'Artistic' Boys: Friendship, Illicit Sex and the British 'Companionship' Advertisement 1913-1928," Journal of the History of Sexuality October 2002.
Colligan, Colette
"'A race of born pederasts': Sir Richard Burton, homosexuality, and the Arabs", Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 25:1 (2003), 1-20.
Cook, Matt
"'A New City of Friends': London and Homosexuality in the 1890s", History Workshop Journal, 56 (2003): 33-58.
Cook, Matt, Robert Mills, Randolph Trumbach and H. G. Cocks
A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Men Since the Middle Ages (Greenwood World Publishing, 2007).
Cook, Matthew David
London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885-1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2003)
Craft, Christopher
Another Kind of Love: Male Homosexual Love in English Discourse, 1850-1920.
Croft-Cooke, Rupert
Feasting With Panthers: A New Considertion of Some Late Victorian Writers. London: W. H. Allen, 1967.
Croft-Cooke,Rupert
The Verdict of You All. London: Secker and Warburg, 1965. Autobiography regarding his conviction and imprisonment on homosexual charges.
Crompton, Louis
Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in 19th-Century England. London: Faber & Faber, 1985. Reprinted by Gay Men's Press.
Crozier, Ivan Dalley
"Striking at Sodom and Gomorrah: The medicalization of male homosexuality and its relation to the law", in Rowbotham, Judith and Stevenson, Kim (eds), Criminal Conversations: Victorian crimes, social panic, and moral outrage (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2005), pp. 126-39.
Damkaer, David M. and Merrington, Oliver J.
"William Harold Leigh-Sharpe (1881-1950), Teacher and Copepodologist", Journal of Crustacean Biology, 25, 3 (August 2005): 521-8. Life of the expert on parasitic copepods (who described 60 new species and 17 new genera), who was arrested and fined for a homosexual offence in 1935, bringing to an end his career in teaching and scientific writings.
David, Hugh
On Queer Street: Social History of British Homosexuality, 1895-1995. 320pp. London: HarperCollins, 1997.
Davenport-Hines, R. P. T.
Sex, Death, and Punishment: Attitudes to Sex and Sexuality in Britain since the Renaissance. London: Collins, 1990.
Dellamora, Richard
Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.
Dellamora, Richard
Victorian Sexual Dissidence. University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Dockray, Martin
"The Cleveland Street scandal 1889-90: the conduct of the defence", Journal of Legal History, 17 (1996), 1-16.
Dowling, Linda
Hellenism and Homosexulity and Victorian Oxford. Cornell University Press, 1994.
Faulkner, Simon
"Homo-exoticism: John Minton in London and Jamaica, 1950-51", in Barringer, Tim J.; Quilley, Geoff; Fordham, Douglas (ed.), Art and the British Empire (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007), 169-88.
Fisher, Trevor
Scandal: sexual politics of late Victorian Britain, Stroud: Sutton, 1995.
Foldy, Michael S.
The Trials of Oscar Wilde: Deviance, Morality, and Late-Victorian Society. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997.
Gardiner, Jill
From the Closet to the Screen. Rivers Oram Press/Pandora, 2002. History of the Gateways Club, the famous lesbian club in London from the 1930s through the 1960s and later that was filmed in The Killing of Sister George
Gardiner, James
A Class Apart: The Private Pictures of Montague Glover. London: Serpent's Tail, 1992.
Gardiner, James
Who's a Pretty Boy Then? One Hundred and Fifty Years of Gay Life in Pictures. London: Serpent's Tail, 1996. Paperback reprint 1999.
Getsy, David J.
"Recognizing the homoerotic: the uses of intersubjectivity in John Addington Symonds' 1887 Essays on Art", Visual Culture in Britain, 8:1 (2007), 37-58.
Gilbert, Arthur N.
"The `Africaine' Courts-Martial: a study of buggery in the Royal Navy", Journal of Homosexuality, 1 (1974), pp. 111-22.
Gilbert, Arthur N.
"Buggery and the British Navy, 1700-1861", Journal of Social History, (1976), pp. 72-98. Reprinted in Wayne R. Dynes and Stephen Donaldson (eds), History of Homosexuality in Europe and America, New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1992), pp. 132-58.
Gilbert, Arthur N.
"Doctor, patient, and onanist diseases in the nineteenth century", Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, (1975).
Gilbert, Arthur N.
"Sexual deviance and disaster during the Napoleonic Wars", Albion, 9 (Spring 1977), pp. 98-113.
Grey, Antony
Speaking Out: Writings on Sex, Law, Politics, and Society, 1954-1995, London: Cassell, 1997.
Hall, Lesley
Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1880. Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.
Hatt, Michael
"Uranian imperialism: boys and empire in Edwardian England", in Barringer, Tim J.; Quilley, Geoff; Fordham, Douglas (ed.), Art and the British Empire (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 153-68.
Harvey, A. D.
"Homosexuality and the British army during the First World War", Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, 79:320 (2001), 313-19.
Harvey, A.
"Prosecutions for Sodomy in England at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century", The Historical Journal, 21 (1978), pp. 939-48.
Hickson, Alisdare
The Poisoned Bowl: Sex, Repression and the Public School System. London: Constable, 1995.
Higgins, Patrick
Heterosexual Dictatorship: Male Homosexuality in Post- war Britain. London: Fourth Estate, 1996.
Hillard, David
"UnEnglish and unmanly: Anglo-Catholicism and homosexuality", Victorian Studies, 25 (Winter 1982), pp. 181-210.
Houlbrook, Matt
"'Lady Austin's camp boys': constituting the queer subject in 1930s London", Gender & History, 14:1 (2002): 31-61.
Houlbrook, Matt
"The private world of public urinals: London 1918-1957", London Journal, 25:1 (2000): 52-70.
Houlbrook, Matt
"Soldier heroes and rent boys : homosex, masculinities, and Britishness in the Brigade of Guards, circa 1900-1960", Journal of British Studies, 42:3 (2003): 351-88.
Houlbrook, Matt
Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 (University of Chicago Press, 2005). Long excerpt from first chapter. Review by Gregory Woods. Review by Rictor Norton
Houlbrook, Matt
A sun among cities: space, identities and queer male practices, London, 1918-1957", University of Essex PhD thesis, 2002.
Hyde, H. Montgomery
The Cleveland Street Scandal. 1976.
Hyde, H. Montgomery
The Other Love: A Historical and Contemporary Survey of Homosexuality in Britain. London: William Heinemann, 1970. [Published in America as The Love that Dared Not Speak Its Name: A Candid History of Homosexuality in Britain, Boston: Little, Brown, 1970]
Hyde, Montgomery, ed.
The Trials of Oscar Wilde. London: Hodge, 1952.
Hyde, Montgomery
The Strange Death of Lord Castlereagh. London: Heinemann, 1959.
Jivani, Alkarim
It's Not Unusual: A History of Lesbian and Gay Britain in the Twentieth Century. London: Michael O'Mara by arrangement with the BBC, 1997.
Kaplan, Morris B.
"'Did My Lord Gomorrah Smile?': homosexuality, class and prostitution in the Cleveland Street Affair", in Robb, George; Erber, Nancy (ed.), Disorder in the court: trials and sexual conflict at the turn of the century (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 78-99.
Kaplan, Morris B.
Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love, and Scandal in Wilde Times by Morris B. Kaplan (Cornell University Press, 2005)
Lane, Christopher
Ruling Passion: British Colonial Allegory and the Paradox of Homosexual Desire. Duke University Press, 1996.
Losey, Jay and Brewer, William D. (eds)
Mapping Male Sexuality: 19th Century England. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000). Includes essays on William Godwin, Byron, Shelley, Disraeli, Beckford, Sheridan Le Fanu and Charles Kingsley. Extracts available on Google Book Search
Lumsden, Andrew
"Down at the old Piano-Zinc, or how to reclaim your gay culture", Gay News, 242 (1982), p. 31.
Parris, Matthew
The Great Unfrocked: Two Thousand Years of Church Scandal. London: Robson Books, 1998. (pbk rprt 1999) Contains a good essay by Nick Angel on Percy Jocelyn, Bishop of Clogher (centre of a great scandal in 1822).
Porter, Kevin and Weeks, Jeffrey (eds)
Between the Acts: Lives of Homosexual Men, 1885-1967. London: Routledge, 1990.
Porter, Roy, and Hall, Lesley
The Facts of Life: The creation of sexual knowledge in Britain, 1650-1950. Yale University Press, 1995.
Power, Lisa
No Bath But Plenty of Bubbles: The London Gay Liberation Front 1970-73. London: Cassell, 1996.
Reade, Brian (ed.)
Sexual Heretics: Male Homosexuality in English Literature from 1850 to 1900. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970; New York: Coward-McCann, 1970.
Robb, Graham
Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century. Picador, 2003.
Sargent, Tom
Bugger's Talk: Social History of British Gay Life 1900-1975. London: Millivrew Books, 1998.
Senelick, Laurence
"Master Wood's profession: Wilde and the subculture of homosexual blackmail in the Victorian theatre", in Bristow, Joseph (ed.), Wilde Writings: contextual conditions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 163-182.
Simpson, Colin, Chester, Lewis and Leitch, David
The Cleveland Street Affair. Boston: Little Brown, 1976.
Sinfield, Alan
The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde and the Queer Moment. London: Cassell, 1994.
Skinner, Gifford
"Cocktails in the Bath", Gay News 135 (1978), 21-4; "The Spittoon Waltz", Gay News 140 (1978), 17-20.
Smith, Timothy d'Arch
Love in Earnest: Some Notes on the Lives and Writings of English `Uranian' Poets from 1889 to 1930. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970.
Sox, David
Bachelors of Art: Edward Perry Warren & the Lewes House Brotherhood (London: Fourth Estate, 1991). Bryn Mawr review. Warren almost single-handedly established the collections of the Boston Museum and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. As well as art, Warren collected young men, establishing in Lewes a brotherhood devoted to the revival of classical ideals.
Taddeo, Julie Anne
Lytton Strachey and the search for modern sexual identity: The last eminent Victorian (Haworth gay & lesbian studies). New York: Harrington Park Press, 2002.
Tamagne, Florence
A History of Homosexuality in Europe: Berlin, London, Paris, 1919-1939, 2 vols, New York: Algora, 2004.
Turner, Mark W.
Backward glances: cruising the queer streets of New York and London, London: Reaktion, 2003.
Vicinus, Martha
"Distance and desire: English boarding school friendships, 1870-1920", Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 9 (1984), no. 4. Reprinted in Duberman et al., Hidden from History, 1989, pp. 212-29.
Weeks, Jeffrey
Between the Acts: Lives of homosexual Men, 1885-1967. Rivers Oram Press, 1995 reprint.
Weeks, Jeffrey
Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain, from the Nineteenth Century to the Present. London: Quartet, 1977. Revised edition, New York and London: Quartet, 1990.
Weeks, Jeffrey
"Inverts, perverts, and Mary-Annes: Male prostitution and the regulation of homosexuality in England in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries", in Licata and Petersen, The Gay Past (1985), 113-34 (orig. pub. 1980) (also reprinted in Duberman et al., Hidden from History, 1989, pp. 195-211.
Weeks, Jeffrey
Sex, Politics, and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality Since 1800, 2nd edn. London: Longman, 1989.
White, Chris (ed.)
Nineteenth-Century Writings on Homosexuality: A Sourcebook. London and New York: Routledge, 1999.

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