Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-206) and index
Friendship so curst': amor impossibilis, the homoerotic lament and the nature of lesbian desire / Valerie Traub -- A crisis of femininity: re-making gender in popular discourse / Sally O'Driscoll -- Pornographic homophobia: L'Academie des dames and the deconstructing lesbian / David Robinson -- Unaccountable women / John C. Benyon -- Reforming the coquette: poly, homo, hetero in the Reform'd coquet and The history of Miss Betsy Thoughtless / Theresa Braunschneider -- The odd women: Charlotte Charke, Sarah Scott and the metamorphoses of sex / Caroline Gonda -- 'Random shafts of malice?': the outings of Anne Damer / Emma Donoghue -- Women beware women: female gothic villains and victims / George E. Haggerty -- 'Do you not know the quotation?': reading Anne Lister, Anne Lister reading / Stephen Colclough -- Tory lesbians: economies of intimacy and the status of desire / Susan S. Lanser
Lesbian dames is the first multi-authored volume to examine the representation of lesbians and lesbianism in the literature and culture of the long eighteenth century. This groundbreaking collection presents a diversity of theoretical and critical approaches, from close literary analysis to the history of reading and publishing, psychoanalysis, biography, historicism, deconstruction and queer theory
