Suggested Reading Pt. 3

Pursuant to 'Suggested Reading pt. 2' (re: need books on queers during ww2), here are some things I've finally come across.

The first is a good book, but it's been almost entirely unhelpful to the research I'm doing... so let's get that out of the way first:

Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 by Matt Houlbrook.


While, as I've said, it's a fantastic book on its own, it is entirely about men, which is interesting academically but not what I'm looking for, unless this thing I'm writing eventually encompasses more male characters. Nevertheless, I highly recommend reading it if you're interested in queer history, etc.--the depth of research and details is really astonishing. I can't imagine how exhausting it would be to write something like this.



Next up--and this is much more helpful to what I'm doing--is A Lesbian History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Women Since 1500 by Rebecca Jennings. She is also the author of Tomboys and Bachelor Girls, which focuses on post-war lesbian culture in Britain (as far as I can gather--I haven't read it yet).

Anyway, despite a truly alarming book jacket, A Lesbian History of Britain is a phenomenal read. Although I'm interested mainly in the interwar years and ww2 of course, I've found myself being sucked into the earlier chapters, too. Jennings' style is very readable--I find academic books to be largely pretentious and dry (I'm not known for having a long attention span), but was delighted to find A Lesbian History...to be neither pedantic nor condescending despite tackling some largely academic issues when it comes to lesbian history (i.e. essentialist vs constructionist theories of lesbian identification throughout history). Like many areas of history, queer studies seem also to be male-dominated; again, without any mind-numbing, abstract blither-blather, Jennings' narratives and analyses are straight-forward and easy to understand even to idiots like me. Um... I guess you can gather by now that aside from having little patience, I am far from an academic frame of mind. How many times have I said 'academic' in this post? This is getting silly and redundant. Point: Read this book! Right now!

Moving on, here are some more relevant authors/titles I haven't read yet (obviously I can't speak for these yet, but they seem topical!):

It's Not Unusual: A History of Lesbian and Gay Britain in the Twentieth Century
by Alkarim Jivani.

The Lesbian History Sourcebook: Love and Sex between Women in Britain from 1870 to 1970 by Alison Oram
Oram has also penned Her Husband was a Woman!: Women's gender-crossing and twentieth century British popular culture

Another suggested author, and one whose work I'm anxious to investigate, is Laura Doan, who is a prof at Manchester U. Here's a list of her work.

I guess that's all I can remember at the moment. Happy reading!