Queer Life & Literature in the 19th Century

In recent years the study of queer literature and history has taken the world by storm with people now more than ever interested in the stories that history tried to erase. Despite this interest however, little has been done to illuminate queer stories of the 19th century. While the lack of community, modern descriptors of sexuality, and the taboo nature of sex in general makes identifying queer narratives in the 19th century difficult, it's by no means impossible. In fact, as you'll come see, literature provides a unique window through which historians and archivists alike can discover the ways in which homoerotic desire was perceived in the 19th century.

Scroll through the exhibit to see the ways in which various selections of 19th century literature from USF Libraries-Tampa Special Collections can be used to trace changing perceptions of homoerotic desire across the century. All of the materials found below and more can be viewed in the  Reading Room !

In the 19th century, modern concepts of and labels for sexual identity as we know it today didn't quite exist. In fact, the use of the word 'gay' to describe homoerotic desire (and the socio-political identity that accompanied it) wasn't made popular until the 1930s. Despite this, various words did in fact exist in the 19th century to describe homoerotic desire, but these were anything but universal and oftentimes described sexual attraction rather than identity. It's for this reason that the word 'queer' has been chosen as an umbrella term to describe the presence of homoerotic desire across the 19th century.

'Queer' has its own long and complicated history. The word began as an adjective in the 16th century to describe anything that that was strange, before becoming a derogatory term in the late 19th/early 20th for those in same-gender relationships, finally being reclaimed in the 1980s by politically radical LGBTQ+ folx as an identity meant to describe anyone who was not heterosexual or cisgender. It's from this last definition that we get the version of 'queer' most often used in academia, and by association this project, which is meant to positively describe non-normative (non-heterosexual) desire outside the boundaries of identity.

In the early to mid-19th century American men became increasingly focused on creating and maintaining 'homosocial spaces,' such as public universities, where they could come together and celebrate male spirituality. This focus on cultivating male spirituality through gender segregated spaces had (likely) unintended homoerotic side effects, leading to the emergence of American literature that dealt with romantic relationships between men. Below are two pieces of fiction and one first-hand account that all highlight the ways in which 'homosocial spaces,' whether in the city, country, or military, allowed homoerotic desire to bloom.

Hughes' diaries span nearly fifty years with the majority of the entries dated between 1830 and 1840, during which time he was stationed with the as an Assistant Surgeon in Florida with the U.S. Army. Beyond offering a detailed look at what life was like during the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), Hughes' writing provides a rare glimpse of how homoerotic desire was perceived by the individuals who experienced it.

As to be expected, the diaries reveal a clear internal conflict between homoerotic desire and Christian beliefs. Due to the lack of queer literature or community at the time, it's highly unlikely that Americans in the early 19th century had any perception of queerness beyond bible passages that condemned sodomy (any sexual act that was non-consensual or non-reproductive) and anti-sodomy laws. While charges of sodomy specifically against non-heterosexual sexual acts were rare during this period, these laws drew a clear connection between homoerotic desire, sin, and immorality.

Arguably one of the most well-known American poets of all time, let alone the 19th century, Walt Whitman's sole poetry collection Leaves of Grass remains an important part of the American and queer literary canons. The collection was first published in 1855 containing only 12 poems, and from there on out grew across several editions and reprints to contain nearly 400.

The "Calamus" sequence, first added to the original collection in 1860, etched Whitman's name into queer literary history due to being one of the earliest positive depictions of male homoerotic desire. Though Whitman never confirmed the queerness of himself or the "Calamus" sequence, despite being asked multiple times to do so by various queer Victorian poets, the poems are rarely read as anything but homoerotic. Additionally, many poems in this sequence deal with sexual aspects of queer life that wouldn't be given names until the early 1900s.

Published in 1870, Bayard Taylor's novel  Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania  is considered to be one of the first, if not the first, queer American novels. Taylor, one of the most famous travel authors of the 19th century, dabbled in poetry and longer fiction as well. The book follows the lives of Joseph and Philip, two young farmers living in rural Pennsylvania, and their romantic relationship over the span of several years.

Despite Joseph's marriage to a young woman, the main focus of the novel remains the men's relationship causing many critics in the late 19th/early 20th century to label it as taking a political stance supporting same-gender relationships. Regardless of whether it was the thinly veiled homoeroticism or the fact that readers found most of the characters unlikable, Joseph was widely considered to be a failure. Interestingly, the Shakespeare quote on the title page of the novel is from Sonnet 114, a popular point of analysis among academics trying to understand Shakespeare's own potential homoerotic desire.

Despite the presence of female sexuality in literature written by and for men, there was still a common belief throughout the majority of the 19th century that women innately couldn't experience sexual desire. Due to this, women who wrote explicitly about female sexual desire, homoerotic or otherwise, in the mid-19th century had essentially two options: go unpublished or coat their writing in religious metaphors and moral lessons so excessive that the (male) literary world would accept it as being appropriate. Listed below are three authors, one of whom is a woman, who wrote about homoerotic female desire in the mid-19th century. Note the differences in the ways in which their work was received, interpreted, and contextualized.

Christina Rossetti, sister of famous painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and a talent in her own right, published her first collection of poetry, Goblin Market and Other Poems, in 1862 at the age of 31. Hailed by many as being one of the most prolific female poets of all time her work often focused on religious and feminist themes, with many of her lyrical poems having become British Christmas carols.

Goblin Market, an extended narrative poem, is by far her most famous work and follows the misadventures of two sisters, Laura and Lizzie, who buy forbidden fruit form a group of goblin merchants. The fruit causes whoever eats it to experience immense pleasure and become addicted to its effects before finally dying from withdrawal, leading many to compare the goblin fruit to the apple eaten by Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Despite being found in multiple collections of Victorian children's stories, the poem features quite a bit of sexual imagery that has led many scholars to read the relationship between the two sisters as homoerotic and as such the entire work as an allegory for sexual repression.

Published in 1866, Algernon Charles Swinburne's Poems and Ballads was the young British author's first collection of poetry. Quickly becoming both famous for its style and infamous for its taboo sexual themes, such as sado-masochism and homoeroticism, Swinburne's collection was widely popular and launched his career. It can't be understated the effect that Swinburne's gender had on his work's popularity within the literary world, as he was presenting female homoerotic desire for men as a man, continuing the long literary tradition of the sexualization of queer women.

His poems diverge from 19th century Classical scholars' interpretations of Sappho's work by their inclusion of explicit homoeroticism. Despite the fact that he wasn't the first to present it as such, Swinburne's poems are a perfect example of the mythologizing of the Classical Greece, as a queer utopia.

Joseph Le Fanu's novella Carmilla is considered to be one of the more important early works of vampire fiction. The story focuses on Laura, a teenager living in Austria with her father, and her relationship with Carmilla, a young woman taken into their care after being injured in a carriage accident. Laura quickly recognizes Carmilla from a dream she had as a child in which a girl watched her sleep, and soon the women become close friends. After several strange incidents it's revealed that Carmilla is actually Miracalla, a 17th century countess and vampire who has been sucking the blood of attractive young women.

In addition to contributing to the vampire tradition, Carmilla has been called the prototypical lesbian vampire, propelled to feed on Laura out of necessity and sexual desire, a desire that her prey doesn't immediately return. While Le Fanu is not the first author to present sexual desire and vampirism hand in hand, Carmilla is the first of very few queer vampire stories and the only vampire story at the time of its publication in which the monster was a woman. Surprisingly, many scholars have noted that the novella doesn't take a stance against homoeroticism or female desire, in fact it seems to praise it, leading many to consider Carmilla as a revolutionary piece of queer and feminist horror fiction.

Despite its groundbreaking nature, Carmilla still benefits from the fact that it was written by a man and it's impossible to ignore the reality that if a woman in the 1870s had written such a story, a queer vampire novella starring two sexually liberated women, it would've likely never been published. As with Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, it's also worth considering the novella's audience and the likelihood that what is read today as 'sexual liberation' was at the time simply queer women being sexualized for the sake of a male audience's enjoyment.

Despite the almost exclusive focus on male artists in the 19th century who wrote explicitly queer literature, there were a substantial number of women who did the same and receive significantly less recognition. Below are three women who were just as unapologetically queer in their writing as men like Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman, but who receive far less recognition due to the sexism that was present in the 19th century literary world, the effects of which are still being felt today.

It's worth noting that despite writing nearly 20 years after Christina Rossetti, the women listed below faced the same challenges that she did when it came to having their work accepted in the (male) literary world. Rather than douse their work in moral lessons however, A. Mary F. Robinson and "Michael Field" took drastically different approaches to ensure the publication of their work laced with homoerotic female desire.

Published in 1886 and written prior to her first marriage, An Italian Garden: A Book of Songs by A. Mary F. Robinson is a stellar example the small subset of 19th queer poetry written by and about women. Many academics have studied Robinson's letters to fellow poet and romantic partner Violet Page (pseudonym Vernon Lee), who she was in a relationship with from 1880 to 1888, in an attempt to paint a fuller picture what life was like for queer women in the 19th century.

While there were other women writing queer poetry the time, Robinson was one of few that signed her work with her true name which is likely attributed to the fact that she sought not for recognition in the present but to "find an audience to-morrow." Despite this focus on posthumous popularity, Robinson did gain a small gathering of admirers among fellow poets including her longtime friend, Uranian poet, and early gay historian John Addington Symonds.

While there were a multitude of women in the late 19th century writing poetry published under male names, few were as fascinating as "Michael Field." Rather than being a singular male poet as the name would suggest, Field was the invention of two poets, relatives, and life-long romantic partners Edith Emma Cooper and Katherine Harris Bradley.

Edith Cooper was the daughter of Katherine Bradley's sister Lissie Cooper, and so beyond being fifteen years her senior, Katherine was also Edith's aunt. The beginnings of the pair's romantic relationship can be traced through the two women's diaries and correspondence which place the transition from niece/aunt to romantic partners somewhere around 1876, when Katherine was 30 and Edith only 14.

Their relationship continued to blossom as Edith, then 16, began studying at the University of Bristol, soon after which the two women moved in together and formed a creative partnership as 'Michael Field.' Though Field's identity was made known earlier into 'his' career, the pair continued to write as Michael Field and live as romantic partners until Emma's death in December of 1913. All in all the pair wrote and published around forty poetry collections, plays, and translations, most of which centered on themes of femininity, female sexuality, and Victorian gender roles.

Despite being considered to be of little literary value, queer pornographic literature from the late Victorian period can offer specific insight into the ways that gender, sexuality and sex interacted with one another in London's blossoming queer subculture. Each of these three novels can be found in Special Collections'  Queer Literature Collection. 

Written by anonymous author 'Jack Saul,' this novel, whose name is a reference to the biblical story of the cities of sin Sodom and Gomorrah, is considered by many to be the first pornographic work in English to focus exclusively on queer subjects. The story is formatted around the narrator and 'author' Jack Saul recounting his life as a rentboy (working class male prostitute) in London. Over the course of an evening Jack reveals the scandalous life he's led and describes various sexual experiences with men, women, and gender non-conforming individuals.

Unlike many other pieces of erotica published at the time little is known about who actually wrote the novel (likely due to its queer content) or how many of the stories Jack tells are based on true events. There are enough similarities between actual events and those recounted in the novel for it to be labeled by many as an early form of the non-fiction novel. For instance, the life and experiences of narrator Jack Saul share quite a few similarities with real life rentboy John Saul.

Teleny, or the Reversal of the Medal is a pornographic novel set in late 19th century Paris focused on the relationship between Des Grieux and the Hungarian pianist Teleny, with whom Des Grieux shares a sexual telepathic connection. Rather than solely focusing on sex the novel deals with surprisingly heavy and realistic themes such as sexual repression, and explores the underground queer subculture of late 19th century Paris.

Unlike The Sins of the Cities of the Plains, we have quite a bit of information on the origins of Teleny which is currently attributed to Oscar Wilde and a group of his collogues. The artistic style of Teleny shares many commonalities with the Aesthetic movement that Wilde and his friends contributed. Additionally, pornographic publisher Charles Hirsch claimed that on numerous occasions men who he recognized as friends of Wilde's would come and drop of an unfinished manuscript of the novel and leave it with him under a fake name, only for the manuscript to be picked up by a different man. This has led many scholars to assume that the novel was written 'round robin' style by a select group of queer Victorian authors, including Oscar Wilde. Interestingly, Hirsch claims that he once sold Wilde a copy of Sins of the Cities of the Plains, suggesting that he may have been inspired after reading the novel to write his own piece of queer erotica.

Much like Sins of the Cities of the Plains, the plot of Letters From Laura and Eveline was heavily inspired by real events, in this case the gender non-conforming performance duo Fanny "Fredrick" Park and Stella "Earnest" Boulton who were arrested in 1870 for 'conspiracy to commit sodomy.' Though Boulton and Park were ultimately acquitted due to the lack evidence that they actually committed sodomy, the trial was high profile enough to lodge the pair into the public eye and inspire numerous pieces of art and literature. Letters From Laura and Eveline follows Laura, Eveline, and their husbands on their respective honeymoons and the various sexual situations they find themselves in.

The intended 'scandalous' element of the novel comes into play when it's revealed that Laura and Eveline are genderqueer women who were born male, a fact which their husbands are unaware of. However, the portrayal of the women's gender nonconformity reads as far more ironic than scandalous with both of their husbands finding no issue with their gender identities and both women finding no lack of sexual partners. What this suggests is that genderqueer individuals had larger and more visible place within Victorian London's queer culture then they are currently given credit for. The lack of genderqueer or transgender history from this time period is likely due to the fact that the study of queer history is still deeply influenced by the cis-heteronormative concept of the gender binary.

As noted before, for the majority of the 19th century little to no language existed to describe homoerotic desire. All of this began to change however with the emergence of sexology, or the study of human sexuality, in the late 1880s. With his publication of Psyhchopathia Sexualis (1886) Richard von Krafft-Ebbing introduced into the English language various terms to describe human sexuality, including "homosexual" and "bisexual," that would slowly become the sexual identities that we use today.

A man of many talents, Edward Carpenter was a philosopher, poet, and early proponent of gay rights, as well as one of the inspirations for E.M. Forster's famous novel Maurice. One of Carpenter's more famous works, Love's Coming of Age, was published just after the conclusion of the Oscar Wilde trials in 1895 leading many to assume he took inspiration from the injustices he witnessed during the trials while writing the essay collection.

For the sake of queer history the most significant essay in the collection is by far "The Intermediate Sex," in which Carpenter notes that those who experience deep romantic feelings for people of the same gender and partake in queer relationships seem to be more advanced than the rest of society. The essay's title is drawn from the concept of "uranians," a phrase coined by German activist Karl Heinrich Urlichs in the 1860s, that defined men who experienced homoerotic desire as having a female psyche and as such being a part of an 'intermediate' sex.

While uranian and its variations have since gone out of style as a sexual identifiers, there's evidence that in the late Victorian period many upper class queer men used uranian to describe themselves. Additionally, in the 1880s and 90s the Uranian poets, which included the likes of Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas, and John Addington Symonds, used the phrase as both a descriptor and an identity, suggesting that the modern concept of sexual identity may have some of its beginnings in the queer literary world.

Beginning in the 1870s, Oxford University became the unofficial hub of the Victorian period's most (in)famous upper-class queer figures: the Uranians. These men, including Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas, John Addington Symonds, and John Francis Bloxam, as well as to a lesser extent Edward Carpenter and Lionel Johnson, focused most of their poetry and prose on the myth of Classical Greece as a queer utopia and the concept of pederasty. Their writing, much of which was featured in Oxford University periodicals such as The Chameleon (1894), idolized the beauty of youth, homoeroticism, and Classical Greece through aesthetic prose.

It's worth noting that pederasty, a tradition in Ancient Greece in which academic men took on young boys as protégées and sexual companions, was practiced in the Classic sense by only a few of the Uranians. In actuality, most of the poets (with the exception of Symonds and Bloxam) were middle-aged men who preferred younger, college-aged men, a preference which they labeled as following 'pederastic tradition' despite their romantic partners being consenting adults. Their infatuation with Classical Greece and 'pederasty' is likely due to the popularity of Classical studies at Oxford in the Victorian period, and the fact that at the time little was known about queer history beyond Classical Greek history and mythology. Linda Dowling's 1994 book  Hellenism and Homosexuality in Victorian Oxford  takes a closer look at the intersection of Classical studies and queer literature in the 19th century.

Though commonly known for his plays, Oscar Wilde wrote a significant amount of poetry during his time in the literary world, notably from 1878 to 1885. In the years following his graduation from Oxford in 1878, Wilde formed himself into a major name in the Aesthetic and Decadent movements through various essays and poems written on the topics. It was in these early years as an aesthete that Wilde created the image of himself that would remain associated with his name until his death in 1900. Characterized by opulence, flamboyance, and a carpe-diem attitude towards all parts of life, this carefully crafted image transformed the Irish born author into a living myth.

In the similar fashion to Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas, or 'Bosie' as Wilde endearingly called him, was a member of the Aesthetic and Decadent movements. However unlike Wilde, Douglas almost exclusively wrote poetry, producing some thirteen separate collections over the course of his life. Despite being remembered almost solely for his relationship and fallout with Oscar Wilde, the poems that Douglas wrote over the span of nearly fifty years are equally as important as Wilde's, if not more so, in their contribution to the literary world of the late Victorian period.

At the height of his career in February of 1895 Oscar Wilde would arrive at his social club The Albemarle to find that Douglas' father, the Marquess of Queensberry, had left him a calling card with the phrase "For Oscar Wilde, posing sodomite" written on it. This event would come to define not only the remaining years of Wilde's life, but his legacy in the literary world which would be tarnished for decades to come. Of the multitude of 19th century queer authors, only a handful of which are featured in this project, Oscar Wilde was the only one whose personal life, an open secret among most writers at the time, was made public in a major way.

Naturally, the court cases and two year prison sentence that Wilde was forced to incur due to little more than his sexuality led to immense amounts of anxiety within the growing number of visibly queer authors at the end of 19th century. Oscar Wilde was arguably the most famous of all of them, and if he could get caught and have his whole life put on display for the public, who was to say that they weren't next?

In 1891 Lionel Johnson, one of the Uranian poets and friend of Wilde's, introduced a thirty-seven-year-old Wilde to his cousin Lord Alfred Douglas who was at the time twenty-one and an undergrad at Oxford. The pair immediately became friends and within two years had entered a romantic relationship, much to the dismay of Douglas's father the Marquess of Queensberry.

Prior to his relationship with Douglas, Wilde's homoerotic desire was knowledge only to those within his close social circle. However, through introducing Wilde to London's male prostitution scene and being incredibly reckless when the pair were in public, Lord Alfred Douglas is largely credited with pushing his partner's sexuality into the public eye.

Regardless of their at times tumultuous relationship, the hundreds of letters and poems that the pair wrote to one another showcase a love that extended long after Wilde's death in November of 1900. The fact that Wilde's legacy was largely considered destroyed while he was still alive is likely the reason that we even have a record of the pair's love, as historically queer people would ask their family or friends to burn any homoerotic writing upon their death. Instead, Wilde's family preserved every letter they could find which is how now nearly 150 years later we works such as  The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde , excerpts from which are pictured below.

After receiving a calling card from the Marquess of Queensberry with the phrase "For Oscar Wilde, posing sodomite" written on it, Wilde followed Douglas' advice (which their mutual friends did not agree with) and sued Queensberry. Wilde claimed that the calling card was a blatant attempt by Douglas' father to ruin to his reputation by spreading lies and as such constituted libel. What Wilde didn't seem to consider however was that the only way he could win the case was if Queensberry's claims were proven to be false. So, what began as a simple attempt to get back at Douglas' father quickly transformed into a public spectacle in which the Marquess of Queensberry was attempted to prove that London's most famous playwright was in fact a "sodomite."

Infamously Queensberry's lawyers used excerpts from some of the especially homoerotic and hedonistic portions of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's first and only novel, to prove that he was immoral and capable of committing sodomy. The excerpts were taken completely out of context and using them to paint a picture of Wilde's morality led to serious conversations over the aesthetic freedom of art. By the court's ruling, a work of art seemed to be an outward expression of the artist's morality and when Wilde left court, having lost the libel case, a warrant was put out for his arrest under charges of gross indecency and sodomy.

Wilde's arrest on April 6th of 1895 marked the beginning of one of the biggest legal spectacles Victorian London had ever seen. By early 1895 Oscar Wilde had become a household name, his plays captivating audiences on a weekly basis, so the shock and chaos that resulted from his arrest was monumental.

With much of his guilt having been determined during his previous case against the Marquess of Queensberry, there was little left for the prosecution to do but convince the jury. Once again literature was brought into the courtroom, this time in the form of a poem written by Lord Alfred Douglas titled "Two Loves." The last line of the poem, "the love that dare not speak its name," was considered to be a euphemism for homoerotic desire and used as evidence against Wilde to suggest that he had corrupted Douglas.

However, the highly politicized nature of the trial and the general lack of order within the courtroom as Wilde gave increasingly metaphorical and witty answers to the prosecutions questions led the jury unable to reach a decision. It wasn't until May 25th, much to the hesitancy of the presiding judges, that the case against Wilde was brought to court again and he was found guilty and sentenced to two years of hard labor at Reading Goal.

In the years following Oscar Wilde's trials and incarceration, London's queer literary world was taken aback. Anxiety grew as authors quickly realized that their fictional works could be used as evidence against them in a court of law, the effects of which can be seen in multiple pieces of literature produced at the turn the century. Oscar Wilde's career as well as Douglas' and those of their close friends were put on the line with most bookstores in England pulling Wilde's books of their shelves. It would be decades before the chaos surrounding the trials calmed and even longer until Oscar Wilde's literature would be given a place in society again.

Published first in French in 1893, Salomé quickly became one of Wilde's most controversial plays for its depiction of the biblical characters such as John the Baptist. Oscar Wilde never had the chance to see the play performed with the only staging prior to his death occurring for one night only in Paris in February of 1896, during which he was still imprisoned at Reading Goal. In fact, the play wouldn't be performed publicly in Great Britain until 1931 due to a censorship law that prevented the depiction of biblical characters on stage. It wasn't until after Wilde's death in November of 1900 that Salomé gained any critical recognition, suggesting that staging the play while its exiled author was still alive was non-negotiable.

The limited edition of Salomé located in Special Collection's  Rare Books Collection  features the original, controversial illustrations from Wilde and Douglas' long-time friend, artist Aubrey Beardsley, many of which were censored in the first English translation.

When Bram Stoker began writing his famous Gothic horror novel Dracula in June of 1895 there was little on the public's mind besides the recent imprisonment of Oscar Wilde. In recent years there have been many academics who have attempted to contextualize Dracula within the anxious aftermath of the Wilde trials, suggesting that is was anything but coincidence that Stoker began the novel just weeks after one of London's most prominent literary figures was charged with gross indecency.

In this reading Jonathan Harker's experiences with Count Dracula represent homoerotic temptation, which he is able to defeat and in doing so re-join 'normal' society. Stoker himself has been considered by many literary historians to have been queer but deeply afraid of acting on his desires, meaning that the exposure of Wilde's personal life might have inspired him to write a counter narrative in which a man experiences homoerotic desire but chooses not to act upon it, preventing his own ruin.

Due to the pair's oftentimes tumultuous relationship and the fact that it was Douglas who convinced Wilde to sue the Marquess of Queensberry for libel, it didn't take long for their mutual friends to place the blame for Oscar Wilde's imprisonment onto Douglas. As a result, he spent the rest of his life fighting numerous biographers, many of which were once his friends, as they attempted to tell the story of Wilde's life with him as the villain.

The New Preface to "The Life and Confessions of Oscar Wilde"(1925) highlights one of Douglas' many efforts to protect his reputation. In this new preface to Frank Harris' biography, Douglas claims that he had attempted to testify in Oscar Wilde's second trial but was turned down by Wilde's legal team, going on to suggest that had he testified Wilde could have won the case. While this preface did little to aid Douglas' reputation at the time, it does stand to paint him now as a man in mourning, fully convinced that he could've saved his partner from ruin.

Despite the anxieties that queer authors were left with at the close of the 19th century, the death of Oscar Wilde would not mark the death of queer literature. In the 120 years since Wilde's death queer literature has transformed from the highly secretive and loosely defined sub-genre showcased above into a visible and flourishing genre with roots in everything from children's to adult literature.

Special Collection's impressive (and still growing!)  Queer Literature Collection,  spanning nearly 150 years, is evidence alone of this transformation, as the idea that queer literature would become a formally recognized and academically valued genre was entirely unheard of even a couple decades ago, let alone in the 19th century. In that same sense the  Hipple Collection of Young Adult Literature 's range of titles, including many that deal with queer topics, is a fantastic measure of queer literature's growth with more young people than ever now able to see openly queer characters in the books they read.

Queer literature seems to have entered its renaissance in the past few years, and as the number of novels on the market dealing with queer topics grows so too will the genre and in turn the acceptance of LBGTQ+ individuals. If only the Victorians could see us now!