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Author Donoghue, Emma, 1969-

Title Passions between women : British lesbian culture, 1668-1801 / Emma Donoghue
Published London : Scarlett Press, 1993

Copies

Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  305.480941 Don/Pbw  AVAILABLE
Description 314 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 22 cm
Contents 1. Female hermaphrodites : -- Classical sources ; Case histories ; Literary games -- 2. Female husbands : -- Short reports ; Mary Hamilton ; Catherine Vizzani -- 3. The breeches part : -- Acting the lover as well as the soldier ; Charlotte Clarke ; Harriot Freke ; Amazons in petticoats -- 4. A sincere and tender passion : -- Seven poems of romantic friendship ; Spinsterhood : Divided hearts ; The distance between us ; suspecting impossibilities -- 5. The truest friends : -- sister souls ; Mrs Morley and Mrs Freeman ; Mrs and Mr Brown ; Mrs Steele and Mrs Baddeley ; Maids and mistresses -- 6. What joys are these? : -- Seducing innocence ; The veil of ignorance ; Foolery from woman to woman ; The dildo tribe ; two orgies ; A thrilling joy, 'till then unknown -- 7. Communities : -- the nun's smooth tongue ; The convent of pleasure ; New cabals ; Sappho ; Sapphic and other traditions
Summary "Where previous historians have concluded that a combination of censorship and ignorance excluded lesbian experience from written history before our era, Emma Donoghue has decisively proved otherwise. She dispels the myth that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century lesbian culture was rarely registered in language and that lesbians of this period had no words with which to describe themselves. Far from being invisible, the figure of the woman who felt passion for women was a subject of confusion and contradiction: she could be put in a freak show as a "hermaphrodite", revered as a "romantic friend", or jailed as a "female husband". By examining a wealth of new medical, legal, and erotic source material, and rereading the classics of English literature, Emma Donoghue has uncovered narratives of an astonishing range of lesbian and bisexual identities in Britain between 1668 and 1801. Female pirates and spiritual mentors, chambermaids and queens, poets and prostitutes, country idylls and whipping clubs all take their place in her intriguing panorama of lesbian lives and loves."--GoogleBooks
Notes Includes index
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Subject Lesbianism in literature.
Lesbianism -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century.
Lesbianism -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century.
Lesbians in literature.
Lesbians -- Sexual behavior -- Great Britain.
Lesbians -- Great Britain -- History.
Lesbians in literature -- Great Britain.
Women -- Sexual behavior -- Great Britain -- History.
Women -- Great Britain -- Sexual behaviour -- History
Homosexuality, Female -- history.
Women -- history.
LC no. 95307777
ISBN 1857270460 (paperback)
1857270517
Other Titles British lesbian culture, 1668-1801