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This is aList of lesbian-themed fiction. It includes books and plays. The lists of adult and of YA-appropriate works are split into separate headings.
Below the main list, the article also includes:
information on particularly prolific publishing subcultures like fanfiction and mysteries;
a list of lesbian and feminist publishing houses; and
Symposium. ByPlato. c. 300s BC. (There's a story about how all soulmate couples, including female-female couples, used to be joined into one two-faced body.)[1][a]
Epigrams. ByMartial. c. 100s AD. (Contains satirical poems about a masculine lesbian character named Philaenis.)[2][3]: 98-99
Waga mi ni tadoru himegimi (Japanese:わが身にたどる姫君) (The Princess in Search of Herself). Author unknown. c.1259-1276. (A passage in volume 6 describes a former priestess and her lady-in-waiting having sex.)[4]
Der Liebe Lust und Leid der Frau zur Frau. Author unknown. 1895. (The only known exemplar is in theBerlin State Library (RVKO number Yx 27911)).[7]
Nana. ByÉmile Zola. 1880. (An extended description of Chez Laure, a Parisian restaurant that caters to a lesbian clientele;[8] the relationship of Nana and the unfaithful Satin, "with her blue eyes and schoolgirlish look", "bitten and beaten and torn this way and that by the two women".)[9]
God of Vengeance. BySholem Asch. 1906. (A Yiddish play where a married woman falls in love with a prostitute her father is pimping out. First lesbian kiss on an American theater stage.)
The Captive (play). ByEdouard Bourdet. 1926. (Tragedy of a young woman who falls into a twisted relationship with another woman.)
Vestal Fire. ByCompton Mackenzie. 1927. (Male main character is invited on a trip to Capri by a lesbian couple, Miss Virginia and Maimie Pepworth-Norton.)
The Well of Loneliness. ByRadclyffe Hall. 1928. (Subject of an obscenity trial that banned the book in the United Kingdom until 1949,[17] though "there are no descriptions of sex in it, no rude words, and the lesbian lovers do not live happily ever after".)[18]
Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy. ByTadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz. 1931. (A lesbian character has an affair with her father's wife. The wife eventually marries the main character, but there is no question of the lesbian feeling any sentiments towards a man.)
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. ByGertrude Stein. 1933. (One of Stein's more accessible works. Others, whose lesbian content may not be apparent to the uninformed reader, includeAs a Wife Has a Cow: A Love Story andLifting Belly.)
Women's Barracks. ByTereska Torres. 1950. (Credited as the first US paperback-original bestseller. Its popularity prompted the formation of the House Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials in the United States.)[23][24]
Le Rempart des Béguines. ByFrançoise Mallet-Joris. 1952. (Helene, a 15-year-old schoolgirl, is seduced by her father's mistress, Tamara.)
The Price of Salt. ByPatricia Highsmith (under the pseudonym "Claire Morgan" before 1990). 1952. (Considered the first lesbian novel with a 'happy ending'; basis for the 2015 filmCarol.)
The Tree and the Vine. ByDola de Jong. 1954. (Portrays a reckless political journalist and a quiet woman in love in Amsterdam, in the years leading up to WWII.)
Chocolates for Breakfast. ByPamela Moore. 1956. (Portrays the bond between the protagonist Courtney Farrell and her boarding school teacher Miss Rosen, and the backlash against them from other teachers and students.)[25]
The_Man_from_C.A.M.P.. ByVictor J. Banis writing as "Don Holliday". 1966. (The gang the main character is investigating is headed by a lesbian nicknamed Big Daddy.)
Loving Her. ByAnn Allen Shockley. 1974. (Openly features a black lesbian protagonist and an interracial lesbian relationship. Widely considered to be the first published African-American lesbian literature.)
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. ByJeanette Winterson. 1985. (A fictionalized autobiography; a coming-of-age story. Follows a lesbian girl raised in an English Pentecostal church. Included in the GCSE and A-Level reading lists for England and Wales.)
Mohawk Trail. ByBeth Brant. 1985. (This collection of stories, poems, and anecdotes about families connected by blood, gayness, and poverty.)
Mousson de femmes (Monsoon of Women). ByElula Perrin. 1985.
Stone Butch Blues. ByLeslie Feinberg. 1993. (A fictionalized autobiography portraying working-class butch-femme culture, following a butch main character.)
Celebrating Hotchclaw. ByAnn Allen Shockley. 2005. (Latest novel as of 2005 by noted novelist Shockley. Covers the inner workings of an HBCU with a lesbian plot.)
Stay and Fight: A Novel. By Madeline ffitch. 2019. (A novel about a lesbian queer family trying to survive on the outskirts of society in Appalachia.)[29]
Between A Rock and A Soft Place: Selected Works. ByS. Renee Bess. 2021.
This section is intended for lesbian-themed fiction that is suitable in complexity and content for teenage readers. Since there is some variability in these individual judgments, a work being marketed under "YA" is sufficient to meet the criteria for inclusion. It can include novels, graphic novels, and plays.
Crush. By Jane Futcher. 1981. (One of the earliest examples of lesbian YA, this book portrays two girls in boarding school who are drawn to one another.)
Pretty Little Liars. BySara Shepard. 2008-Present. (A main character, Emily Fields, is bisexual and has a crush on her friend Allison and a later relationship with her neighbor Maya.)
The Girl from Mars (Marsmädchen). ByTamara Bach. 2008.
Skim. ByMariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki. 2008. (A graphic novel portraying a teenage misfit with a schoolgirl crush on a teacher.)
Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel. BySara Farizan. 2014. (A closeted high schooler who already feels out of place crushes on a new fellow student.)
Fanfiction writers have produced many works in which female characters from fictional sources (such astelevision shows,movies,video games,anime,manga orcomic books) are paired in romantic, spiritual, or sexual relationships. The genre is known by a variety of terms, includingfemslash,saffic,yuri and f/f slash. Lesbian content in fanfiction dates at least to 1977, but has become more popular during the 1990s and 2000s.
The Lesbian in Literature by Gene Damon (Barbara Grier) – bibliography of any title with lesbian content through 1969
Chloe plus Olivia – An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the Seventeenth Century to the Present, ed.Lillian Faderman, Penguin Books 1995
Las Tortilleras: Hispanic and U.S. Latina Lesbian Expression, edited by Inmaculada Perpetusa-Seva and Lourdes Torres, Temple University Press 2003
Carbado, Devon W.; McBride, Dwight A.; Weise, Donald, eds. (2011).Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual African American Fiction (2nd ed.).Cleis Press.ISBN978-1573447140.
^"[H]e begins by treating of the origin of human nature. The sexes were originally three, men, women, and the union of the two; and they were made round—having four hands, four feet, two faces on a round neck, and the rest to correspond. Terrible was their strength and swiftness; and they were essaying to scale heaven and attack the gods. Doubt reigned in the celestial councils; the gods were divided between the desire of quelling the pride of man and the fear of losing the sacrifices. At last Zeus hit upon an expedient. Let us cut them in two, he said; then they will only have half their strength, and we shall have twice as many sacrifices. He spake, and split them as you might split an egg with an hair; and when this was done, he told Apollo to give their faces a twist and re-arrange their persons, taking out the wrinkles and tying the skin in a knot about the navel. The two halves went about looking for one another, and were ready to die of hunger in one another's arms. Then Zeus invented an adjustment of the sexes, which enabled them to marry and go their way to the business of life. Now the characters of men differ accordingly as they are derived from the original man or the original woman, or the original man-woman. Those who come from the man-woman are lascivious and adulterous; those who come from the woman form female attachments; those who are a section of the male follow the male and embrace him, and in him all their desires centre."
^"Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 181 - The Anandrine Sect". 24 October 2020.The Anandrine Sect itself is first introduced—as far as I can find—in the pornographic work L'espion Anglais (The English Spy) written in 1778. This is a collection of salacious anecdotes, one of which involves an adolescent country girl who, having inclinations toward sex with women, is sent off to Paris to be initiated into an Anandrine sect. Her sponsor describes the group thus: "A tribade," she told me, "is a young virgin who, not having had any relations with men, and convinced of the excellence of her sex, finds in it true pleasure, pure pleasure, dedicates herself wholly to it, and renounces the other sex, as perfidious as it is seductive. Or, it is a woman of any age who, having fulfilled the wish of nature and country for the propagation of the human race, gets over her mistake, detests, abjures crude pleasures, and devotes herself to training pupils for the goddess." [...] [The initiation ceremony] takes place in a classical temple featuring statues of the goddess Vesta, of Sappho, and other symbolic figures.
^Walker, Lisa (2003).Afterword (1st Feminist Press ed.). New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York. pp. 179–206.ISBN1-55861-462-1.OCLC52478429.
