Sex variant women in literature

by Jeannette Howard Foster

2600 years of Lesbian history.

Fascinating in its account of famous Lesbians throughout the years, analyzing the books they wrote, their efforts to achieve publication and their lives with other Lesbians.

Ranging from the Biblical Ruth and Sappho through creative works in all languages of Western Europe (Italian, French, German, Spanish, English and Portuguese), Jeannette Howard analyzes poetry, drama and fiction for all reference to Lesbians and Lesbianism.

A lengthy section discusses such famous women as the Ladies of Langollen, Emily Dickinson, Louise Labe, Margaret Fuller, George Sand, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Adah Isaacs Menken and Michael Field. Another section includes analysis of the vital works of the renaissance of Lesbian literature from 1900 through mid-twentieth century that laid the groundwork for today's burgeoning Lesbian literary world including Kay Boyle, Djuna Barnes, Renee Vivien, Natalie Clifford-Barney, Virginia Wolfe, Isak Dinesen, Colette, Vita Sackville-West, Radclyffe Hall, Dorothy Richardson, Henry Handel Richardson, Christa Winsloe, Frances Brett Young, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Baker, Helen R Hull, Rosamond Lehmann, Shirley Jackson, Katherine Mansfield and others too numerous to mention.

Genres: Nonfiction, Lesbian, LGBT, History, Queer, Feminism, Literary Criticism

420 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Jeannette Howard Foster was an American librarian, professor, poet, and researcher in the field of lesbian literature.
(source: Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Bookish · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in 1956, Sex Variant Women in Literature was the first book to show that lesbian, bisexual and cross-dressing women could be traced back at least 3,000 years through more than 300 texts. The book's author, Jeannette Howard Foster, was one of the few women to hold a doctorate degree in library science in her time and is a queer hero of the highest order. As a self-supporting woman during the McCarthy Era, when homosexuals in the U.S. were often fired from their jobs, Foster risked her livelihood by self-publishing this cornerstone of modern queer studies under her own name.

Foster’s career and her 20-year project of uncovering a lesbian literary lineage were shaped not just by her passionate lesbianism, but by the sexism of her profession. According to Joanne Passet’s fascinating biography of Foster, Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeanette Howard Foster, Foster surely had a knack for attaching herself to female teachers who could guide her studies and professional advancement as one of the few U.S. women to hold a doctorate in library science. But they couldn’t protect her from academic sexism’s powerful kick, which kept her searching for a better position every five years or so. Yet in the long run, Foster prevailed in her iconoclastic mission to track down the coded lesbian literature that affirmed her deepest feelings. Living and working in 17 states brought her unprecedented access to lesbian literature in public and private collections from Chicago to Boston to Atlanta, allowing her to catalog it for the first time in a single reference book.

Foster’s pioneering book found an appreciative audience amid the flowering of the lesbian and gay movement in the 1970s, when Sex Variant Women in Literature was plucked from obscurity and reprinted by a new generation of women. Several of them, including Naiad Press publisher Barbara Grier and activist and editor Karla Jay, embraced Jeannette personally after discovering her work, going so far as to visit her in a nursing home in rural Arkansas. Coming after the many years Foster had been pushed aside professionally, it’s a satisfying ending to Foster’s life, which richly deserves Passet’s sensitive and scrupulous attention — and ours.

[Joanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A valuable resource for anyone developing a collection of books with lesbian references before written before 1970. Hard to find.

[Emma Johnsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It [variant literature] did not, however, cease entirely, and since the end of World War II, trends in fiction suggest that variance is on its way to becoming a recognized if not accepted segment of human experience.” oh jeannette you were right!!! i wish you could see the plethora of amazing lesbian literature now!!!!

JHF you amaze me. i wish this book had a bigger following. so enlightening and ahead of its time. a wonderful resource for dissecting pre-1950 lesbian literature. this needs to get a reprint so i can throw this at everyones heads. lesbian literature has been around forever and is here to stay!!

8.5/10 or 4/5 & e-book (some random sketch pdf i found lmao)

[Stephy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jeannette Foster spent her early career as an assistant to Kinsey, Pomeroy and Martin, famed for "Sexual Behavior in Human Males" and "Sexual Behavior in Human Females". She did a lot of cataloguing materials for them, an as her own project kept up with Sex Variant Women in Literature, which became her Masterpiece. She was older when it was finally published, when the publishers finally believed there might be a market for it.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Foster's bibliography was my constant companion during my adolescence (mid 50s-mid 60s). As a young, lonely lesbian I relied on her scholarship to find books about girls and women like me. I will be forever grateful to her; and to San Francisco's Tro Harper Books for having it on the remainder table and selling it to me without a second glance.

[Rosie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This undoubtedly required protracted research, and it's a landmark text, basically the first of such studies of lesbian literature. However, in its language and perspective, it's a product of its time, daring only to carefully skirt over the disapproving and disgusted viewpoint on lesbians common then, and it instead approaches the subject from a distance, without disapproval but not really with approval either. I understand the social and political context in which the author was writing the novel, and the difficulty of writing, much less publishing such a novel in that era, and yet at times I grew annoyed at it while I read, because Foster is extremely ambivalent most of the time while discussing this topic, and it's rather obnoxious, not being able to locate the viewpoint of the author who you're reading the work of. She's never overtly censuring, but her tone is so careful, so meticulously located so as not to offend the popular audience while not inviting censure to herself from that popular audience, that it's painful to read sometimes. That's due to when she published this, I know, but it definitely negatively affected my reading experience. Compared to, say, Jane Rule's Lesbian Images, the difference in my reading experience (due to when Jane Rule's book was published - during the heyday of the second wave of the women's liberation movement) is very obvious.

Also, this book got a bit monotonous at times. It would be hard for it not to, I suppose, since it's a study of hundreds of titles, but I almost felt Foster getting hasty near the last third, skimming over books, briefly summarizing them, and moving on with impatience.

One other thing: None of the French or German poetry is translated, so I had to painstakingly transcribe into Google translate the poems, for the sake of understanding what was being said, which was slow going, inconvenient, and annoying.

Overall, I respect this book - a very important one that paved the road for many to follow - and I enjoyed learning about the subject, but Foster's overly careful perspective/ambivalence and the monotony that gradually made itself apparent make me unable to give this book a higher rating.