Lesbian Literature

Essays about books by and about women who love women

A Short History of Black lesbian Writers

The Love Letters of Literary Lesbians

The Coming Out Stories of Literary Lesbians

Lesbian in a Heterosexual World

Lesbian is my Gender

The Entangled Roots of Racial Superiority and Homophobia

A Personal Story About My Favorite Lesbian Film

The Importance of Literature by Queer Women for a Queer Woman

Fiction

In alphabetical order, reviewed list first

Bastard Out of North Carolina: Dorothy Allison

Incest: Chrstine Angot

Boulder: Eva Baltasar

Permafrost: Eva Baltasar

Mammoth: Eva Baltasar

Ryder: Djuna Barnes

Women Lovers, or the Third Woman: Natalie Barney

The One Who is Legion: Natalie Barney

Women: Chloe Caldwell

Playboy: Constance Debré

Love Me Tender: Constance Debré

Name: Constance Debré

In Thrall: Jane Delynn

They: Kay Dick

Sphinx: Anne Garréta

Carol, or The Price of Salt: Patricia Highsmith

Fair Play: Tove Jansson

La Bâtarde: Violette Leduc

Thérèse et Isabelle: Violette Leduc

A Green Equinox: Elizabeth Mavor

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter: Carson McCullers

Reflections in a Golden Eye: Carson McCullers

Notes on a Crocodile: Qiu Miaojin

Chelsea Girls: Eileen Myles

Cool for You: Eileen Myles

All Roads are Open: Annemarie Schwarzenbach

Loving Her: Ann Allen Shockley

Three Women: Gertrude Stein

Olivia by Dorothy Strachey

Winter Love: Han Suyin

The Girls in 3-B: Valerie Taylor

Wound: Oksana Vasyakina

Faustian and Other Stories: Renee Vivien & Helene de Zuylen

Tipping the Velvet: Sarah Waters

Fingersmith: Sarah Waters

The Scorpion / Of Love Forbidden: Anna Elisabet Weirauch

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: Jeanette Winterson

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal: Jeanette Winterson

Mrs. Dalloway: Virginia Woolf

Orlando: Virginia Woolf

The Safekeep: Yael Van Der Wouden

Nightwood, Djuna Barnes

The (sapphic) poems and plays of Aphra Behn

Girls, Girls, Girls: Shoshana von Blanckensee

Ruby Fruit Jungle - Rita Mae Brown

Learned by Heart: Emma Donoghue

My Lesbian Novel: Renee Gladwell

The Gilda Stories: Jewelle Gomez

The Well of Loneliness: Radclyffe Hall

A Raisin in the Sun: Lorraine Hansberry

The Chinese Garden: Rosemary Manning

Member of the Wedding: Carson McCullers

Ballad of the Sad Cafe: Carson McCullers

Last Words from Montmartre: Qiu Miaojin

Chocolates for Breakfast: Pamela Moore

Under the Udala Trees: Chinelo Okparanta

Mrs S.: K Patrick

Liane de Pougy: Sapphic Idyll

On Strike Against God: Joanna Russ

After Sappho: Selby Wynn Schwartz

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas: Gertrude Stein

Terminal Boredom: Stories: Izumi Suzuki

Words of a Woman who Breathes Fire: Kitty Tsui

A Woman Appeared to Me: Renee Vivien

Lilith’s Legacy: Renee Vivien

The Color Purple: Alice Walker

Summer Will Show: Sylvia Townsend Warner

Zipper Mouth: Laurie Weeks

Torchlight To Valhalla: Gale Wilhelm

Written on the Body: Jeannette Winterson

To the Lighthouse: Virginia Woolf

The Waves: Virginia Woolf

A Room of One’s Own: Virginia Woolf

Non-Fiction

The Best Biographies of Queer Women Writers

Djuna (a graphic biography): Jon Macy

Biographies on Romaine Brooks

Sophia Parnok: The Life and Work of Russia’s Sappho: Diana Lewis Burgin

Sapphistries: Leila J. Rupp (general history)

Queer Phenomenology: Sara Ahmed

Light in the Dark (Lux en lo Oscuro): Gloria E. Andazldúa

Dear Tiny Heart: The Letters of Jane Heap and Florence Reynolds: Holly A. Baggett

Gender Trouble: Judith Butler

Who’s Afraid of Gender?: Judith Butler

Lesbianism: An Act of Resistance: Cheryl Clarke

Black Lesbian in White America: Anita Cornwell

Adventures of the Mind: The Memoirs of Natalie Clifford Barney: Natalie Clifford Barney

Chains of Love and Beauty: Carolyn Dever

One Soul We Divided, A Critical Edition of the Diary of Michael Field: Carolyn Dever

The Black Period: Hafizah Augustus Geter

Hijab Butch Blues: Lamya H.

Reminiscences of a Student’s Life: Jane Ellen Harrison

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Saidiya Hartman

Sister Outsider: Audre Lorde

Cancer Journals: Audre Lorde

Highsmith, A Romance of the 1950s: Marijane Meaker

Jack and Eve: Wendy Moore

Public Faces, Secret Lives: Wendy L. Rouse

In the Dreamhouse: Carmen Maria Machado