Writing the Modern Histories of Homosexual England

Abstract

The most useful sexual histories are those that provide depth of context without either assuming sexual identity or anticipating its complete absence; those that do not force taxonomies; histories that resist any simple teleological account of a shift from ‘homosexuality’ as sexual excess to the homosexual as a species. This review examines attempts to write such histories – what has recently been termed the ‘new British queer history’. I will focus on some strands of male and female same-sex desires and their expression in England in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: male and female same-sex friendships, effeminacy in men and masculinity in women; and representations of lesbianism. This review discusses these histories of desires that resist present-day sexual assumptions.

Transgender: A Useful Category?

“…An issue to consider is whether using terms such as trans* and transgender in a context in which these categories did not exist is valid for historical analysis. The same question has been raised regarding the use of terms such as homosexual (Reay 2009), lesbian (Velasco 2011), or pornography (Vicente 2016) before the nineteenth century. One cannot use categories that may impose modern values onto historical subjects.…”

The Absent Presence of Virginia Woolf: Queering Downton Abbey

“…Subsequent histories—literary or otherwise—have set themselves in counterpoint to the iconic figure of Wilde. For example, see Matt Houlbrook, Queer London (241–42), and Barry Reay's exploration of the ways Oscar Wilde shapes some histories of what he calls “homosexual England” (213).…”