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"Before lesbianism became a specific identity category in the West, its mere suggestion functioned as a powerful source of scandal in early twentieth-century British and Anglo-American culture. Reconsidering notions of the 'invisible' or 'apparitional' lesbian, Jodie Medd argues that lesbianism's representational instability, and the scandals it generated, rendered it an influential force within modern politics, law, art and the literature of modernist writers like James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Virginia Woolf. Medd's analysis draws on legal proceedings and parliamentary debates as well as crises within modern literary production - patronage relations, literary obscenity and cultural authority - to reveal how lesbian suggestion forced modern political, cultural and literary institutions to negotiate their own identities, ideals and limits. Medd's text will be of great interest to scholars and graduate students in gender and women's studies, modernist literary studies and English literature"-- BACKING AND FRONTING THE LITTLE REVIEWTHE OBSESSION OF WOMEN; MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION AND (IL)LEGITIMATE BIRTHS; DOING THE LESBIAN BUSINESS; STRONG HARD FILTH; "AND NOW FOR GOD'S SAKE DON'T PUBLISH ANY MORE OBSCENE LITERATURE"; CHAPTER 4 Bloomsbury and the Scandal of The Well of Loneliness; SPEAKING SEX: REVOLUTIONARY BLOOMSBURY?; REALMS OF DISCLOSURE: FROM THE DRAWING ROOM TO THE COURTROOM; THE POLITICS OF CENSORSHIP AND THE POETICS OF COMMUNITY IN A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN, "GERALDINE AND JANE," AND THE WAVES; CONCLUSION; Notes; INTRODUCTION. Cover; LESBIAN SCANDAL AND THE CULTURE OF MODERNISM; Title; Copyright; Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction: Extraordinary Allegations: Scandalous Lesbian Suggestion and the Culture of Modernism; FROM INVISIBLE WOMEN TO SCANDALOUS SUGGESTION; ONCE A TRIBADE, ALWAYS A DYKE?: NOTES ON LESBIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY; LESBIAN NAME-CALLING: A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY; WHOSE EPISTEMOLOGY OF (HOMO)SEXUALITY?; SITUATING THE SUGGESTION OF LESBIANISM; GREAT WAR SCANDAL AND THE SUGGESTION OF LESBIANISM; MEDIATING MODERNIST PUBLICS AND PRIVATES; THE PLEASURES OF NARRATIVE. CHAPTER 1 THE SUGGESTION OF LESBIANISM AND THE GREAT WARCHAPTER 2 LESBIAN GHOST STORIES AND POSTWAR CULTURE; CHAPTER 3 MODERNIST PATRONAGE, LITERARY OBSCENITY, AND "DOING THE LESBIAN BUSINESS"; CHAPTER 4 BLOOMSBURY AND THE SCANDAL OF THE WELL OF LONELINESS; CONCLUSION; Index. DOMESTIC UNHAPPINESS IN TIME OF PEACEPARLIAMENTARY ARGUMENTS FROM LESBIAN ANALOGY; "THE MERE IDEA OF THE SUGGESTION OF SUCH A THING": DEBATING WOMEN'S GROSS INDECENCY; "THESE KIND ARE MORE DANGEROUS THAN ALL THE MEN WHO ATTACK YOUR HOUSEHOLD PUT TOGETHER": ADVICE TO YOUNG HUSBANDS ON PROTECT; PART TWO The Suggestion of Lesbianism and Modernist Communities; CHAPTER 3 Modernist Patronage, Literary Obscenity, and "Doing the Lesbian Business"; THE MODERNIST PATRON AND THE LESBIAN MIDWIFE; THE CONDITIONS OF MODERNIST PATRONAGE; GIVING BIRTH TO THE "MALE REVIEW." PART ONE The Suggestion of Lesbianism and British National CultureCHAPTER 1 The Suggestion of Lesbianism and the Great War: "The Cult of the Clitoris" Scandal; "IN LESBIAN ECSTASY": REPRESENTING THE WAR; THE SPECTACLE OF THE COURTROOM; QUEERING SALOMÉ: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE; RESURRECTING WILDE; "GRAVE MORAL DANGER": FEMALE SEXUAL MORALITY AND THE CRISIS OF WARTIME; THE MAUD ALLAN MYTH; SPY FEVER; READING CULTS AND CLITS; EXPERTS AND PERVERTS; THE "TOPSY TURVEY" LANGUAGE OF A HOMOSEXUALIST; CHAPTER 2 Lesbian Ghost Stories and Postwar Culture; SÉANCES AND SLANDER.
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