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Lesbian literature is a subgenre of literature addressing lesbian themes. It includes poetry, plays, fiction addressing lesbian characters, and non-fiction about lesbian-interest topics. Fiction that falls into this category may be of any genre, such as historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and romance. Overview Lesbian literature includes works by lesbian authors, as well as lesbian-themed works by heterosexual authors. Even works by lesbian writers that do not deal with lesbian themes are still often considered lesbian literature. Works by heterosexual writers which treat lesbian themes only in passing, on the other hand, are not often regarded as lesbian literature. The fundamental work of lesbian literature is the poetry of Sappho of Lesbos. From various ancient writings, historians have gathered that a group of young women were left in Sappho's charge for their instruction or cultural edification. Not much of Sappho's poetry remains, but that which does demonstrates the topics she wrote about: women's daily lives, their relationships, and rituals. She focused on the beauty of women and proclaimed her love for girls. Certain works have established historical or artistic importance, and the world of lesbian fiction continues to grow and change as time goes on. Until recently, contemporary lesbian literature has been centered around several small, exclusively lesbian presses, as well as online fandoms. However, since the new millennium began, many lesbian presses have branched out to include the works of trans men and women, gay and bisexual voices, and other queer works not represented by the mainstream press. Additionally, novels with lesbian themes and characters have become more accepted in mainstream publishing. Early literature Medieval Christian mysticism The European Middle Ages lacked a specific term for lesbians, but medieval French texts, under the influence of the Arabic literature of the period, featured literary depictions of love and sexual desire between women. Such expressions are found in devotional texts to the Virgin Mary or the hagiography of Ida Louvain, by Beguines, or the writings of female Christian mystics, including Hildegarde of Bingen, Hadewijch, Margery Kempe, Mechtild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete. 13th century Japan One of the oldest Japanese stories involving a romance and implied sexual relations between women appears to be the 6th volume of Waga mi ni tadoru himegimi| (Japanese: わが身にたどる姫君) (The Princess in Search of Herself) which was created between 1259 and 1278 (author unknown). 19th century: forerunners In the early 19th century, Chinese poet Wu Tsao gained popularity for her lesbian love poems. Her songs, according to poet Kenneth Rexroth, were "sung all over China". Though lesbian literature had not yet evolved as a distinct genre in English in the 19th century, lesbian writers like the essayist and supernatural fiction writer Vernon Lee sometimes hinted at lesbian subtexts in their work or, like Lee's lover Amy Levy, wrote love poems to women using the voice of a heterosexual man. Others wrote, but kept their writing secret. Beginning in 1806, English landowner and mountaineer Anne Lister kept extensive diaries for 34 years, which included details of her lesbian relationships and seductions, with the lesbian sections written in secret code. The diaries were not published until the 1980s. In 2010, they were the basis for a BBC television production, The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister. Twenty-first century writer and editor Susan Koppelman compiled an anthology titled Two Friends and Other 19th-century American Lesbian Stories: by American Women Writers, which includes stories by Constance Fenimore Woolson, Octave Thanet, Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, Kate Chopin and Sarah Orne Jewett that were originally published in periodicals of their time. Of these stories, which range "from the explicit to inferentially lesbian", Koppelman said, "I recognize these stories as stories about women loving women in the variety of romantic ways that we wouldn't even have to struggle to define if we were talking about men and women loving each other." Since the 1970s, scholars of lesbian literature have analyzed as lesbian relationships that would not have been labeled as such in the 19th century due to different conceptions of intimacy and sexuality. For example, Christina Rossetti's 1862 poem "Goblin Market" has been widely read as a narrative of lesbianism, even though it attempts to paint itself as a narrative of sisterly love. Scholars have also seen lesbian potential in characters such as Marian Halcombe in Wilkie Collins's 1859 novel The Woman in White. Marian is described as masculine and unattractive, and her motivation throughout the story is her love for her half-sister, Laura Fairlie. Additionally, scholars have engaged in queer readings of the novels of Charlotte Brontë, particularly Shirley and Villette, in which the female main characters engage in close or even obsessive relationships with other women. Some have even speculated that Brontë herself may have been in love with her friend Ellen Nussey; Vita Sackville-West called the letters between the two "love letters pure and simple." Scholars have similarly speculated on whether the 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson might have been in love with her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert, a possibility that encourages queer readings of Dickinson's many love poems. Michael Field was the pseudonym used by two British women, Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, who wrote poetry and verse-dramas together. Bradley was Cooper's aunt, and the two lived together as lovers from the 1870s to their deaths in 1913 and 1914. Their poetry often took their love as its subject, and they also wrote a book of poems for their dog, Whym Chow. Certain canonical male authors of the 19th century also incorporated lesbian themes into their work. At the beginning of the century, Samuel Taylor Coleridge published his unfinished narrative poem "Christabel". Scholars have interpreted the interactions in this poem between the titular character and a stranger named Geraldine as having lesbian implications. Algernon Charles Swinburne became known for subject matter that was considered scandalous, including lesbianism and sadomasochism. In 1866, he published Poems and Ballads, which contained the poems "Anactoria" and "Sapphics" concerning Sappho of Lesbos and dealing explicitly with lesbian content. Finally, Henry James portrayed a Boston marriage, considered an early form of lesbian relationship, between the feminist characters Olive Chancellor and Verena Tarrant in his 1886 novel The Bostonians. One of the more explicitly lesbian works of the 19th century is the Gothic novella Carmilla, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, first published in serial form in 1871-72. Considered a precursor to and an inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula, Carmilla tells the story of the relationship between.... Discover the L L Raand popular books. Find the top 100 most popular L L Raand books.