Novel Approaches to Lesbian History

Author
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan
Location
Cham, Switzerland
Publication year
2021
Comment

Romances appear in a number of chapters (though it's not always easy to determine when a book under discussion is a romance if that's not the focus of the chapter) but for a discussion which is predominantly (though not exclusively) about romance, see the chapter titled "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lesbian Sex* *But Only In Historical Fiction." Here's the abstract for the whole book:

Novel Approaches to Lesbian History tells a tale about history and community in our allegedly post-identity era, examining contemporary novels that depict lesbian characters in recognizable historical situations.  These imaginative stories provide a politically vital, speculative past in the face of a sketchy, problematic archive.  Among the memorable characters in some 200 novels are pirates, cowgirls, and famous artists, ghosts and time travellers, immigrants and lovers.  The best lesbian historical novels are conscientious and buoyant as they engage critical historiographical questions, but Novel Approaches also discusses the class and race biases that weigh on the genre.  Some lesbian historical novels are based on archival evidence, others on conjecture or fantasy, but all convey the true fact that identity is elusive without a past, without which its future is nearly impossible. 

Works in this collection