Queering the Underworld by Scott Herring

At the start of the twentieth century, tales of 'how the other half lives' surged in popularity, offering readers spectacular revelations of the underworld and the deviants who populated it. Scott Herring shows how a key group of authors, from Jane Addams and Willa Cather to Carl Van Vechten and Djuna Barnes, fulfilled the conventions of slumming literature while undermining its goals. Their work frustrated the reader's desire for sexual knowledge, restored the inscrutability of sexual identity, and cast doubt on the value of a homosexual subculture made visible and so open to official control. Herring connects these writers to ongoing debates about lesbian and gay history and politics.