LFW 
Editions & Revisions All the official reports say they are dead-extinct since the late ’80s, when a fed named Jameson Arkeley nailed the last vampire in a fight that nearly killed him. But the evidence proves otherwise. When a state trooper named Caxton calls the FBI looking for help in the middle of the night, … Read more
Editions & Revisions While much has been written on Woolf, Stein and others, the fundamental ‘lesbian question’, the one that engages their lesbian frame of vision, is rarely asked: when Virginia looked at Vita, what did she see? In this work, Elizabeth Meese examines the ways in which the ‘experiences’ of the text, and the … Read more
Editions & Revisions Structured as a sequence of prose poems, presented in three sections corresponding to different periods of Bilitis’ imagined life: her idyllic youth in a pastoral village, her awakening to sensuality in the city of Mytilene under Sappho’s influence, and her later years as a courtesan in Cyprus. The poems are delicate, introspective, … Read more
Editions & Revisions Brief write-up Editions Table Title Year ISBN Cover The Well of Loneliness 1928 — The Well of Loneliness 1928 — The Well of Loneliness 1929 — The Well of Loneliness 1932 The Well of Loneliness 1950 The Well of Loneliness 1951 The Well of Loneliness 1951 The Well of Loneliness 1954 The … Read more
Editions & Revisions In the novel, Clara (the protagonist’s wife whom he leaves) had been drawn to Kate Chancellor during her college days. Kate is portrayed sympathetically as an intelligent, passionate woman, and there is a suggestion of Clara’s temporary fascination or attraction to her. This relationship or attraction is not extensively developed in the … Read more
Editions & Revisions What makes The Making of Americans particularly significant in terms of lesbian literature is that it doesn’t present lesbian identity as pathological or as a problem to be solved, which was common in literature of that era. Instead, same-sex attractions are presented as part of the complex fabric of human experience and … Read more
Editions & Revisions Surplus (1924) is an early and significant work of lesbian fiction that predates better-known novels like Radclyffe Hall’s “Well of Loneliness.” The novel follows Sally Wraith, a young woman navigating life after serving as an ambulance driver during World War I. When Sally meets Averil, whom she considers her “dream girl,” she … Read more
Editions & Revisions James Huneker’s Painted Veils, published in 1920, was indeed controversial for its time and includes lesbian content that was quite daring for the era. The character who is lesbian-coded is Dora, who is portrayed as Easter’s “mannish” friend and companion. Dora is depicted as having masculine characteristics both physically and in her … Read more
Editions & Revisions Mercedes de Acosta’s “Moods” (published in 1919) is a collection of poetry that contains subtle but notable lesbian themes, though like much literature of its era, these themes are often veiled or expressed through metaphor. The collection reflects de Acosta’s own identity – she was openly lesbian at a time when this … Read more
Editions & Revisions Clemence Dane’s novel Regiment of Women (published in 1917) doesn’t contain explicit lesbian content by modern standards, but it does feature coded representations of lesbian relationships that were quite controversial for its time. Regiment of Women is the debut novel of Winifred Ashton writing as Clemence Dane. The novel centers on a … Read more