Circulating Queerness: Before the Gay and Lesbian Novel

A new history of the queer novel shows its role in constructing gay and lesbian lives

The gay and lesbian novel has long been a distinct literary genre with its own awards, shelving categories, bookstore spaces, and book reviews. But very little has been said about the remarkable history of its emergence in American literature, particularly the ways in which the novel about homosexuality did not just reflect but actively produced queer life.

Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s insight that the hist...