This list includes exceptional works about Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender experience. Authors are usually limited to one title. All available public domain works (Shakespeare, Whitman, Wilde, many more) link to free, unabridged copies. For biographical and historical information, see the glbtq encyclopedia. And don't forget to check out 100 best gay and lesbian books.
[visit GLBT Literature for more info]
Non-FictionBiography, History, Politics, Philosophy, Science & More | ||
Ackerley, J.R. | My Father & Myself | Examines his family and British society; 1968 |
Anzaldúa, Gloria | Borderlands = La Frontera | US and Mexican cultures, genders, selves; 1987 |
Arenas, Reinaldo | Before Night Falls | Memoir of gay life in Cuba before and during Castro regime; 1993 |
Bacon, Francis | Essays on many topics by the great English philosopher, statesman, jurist, and literary stylist, who also helped originate the scientific method of problem solving; 1625 | |
Bagemihl, Bruce | Biological Exuberance | Same-sex traits in the animal world and natural diversity; 1999 |
Barthes, Roland | S/Z | Provocative analysis of Balzac's 1830 transgender-themed story Sarrasine [free online]; 1970 |
Bashô, Matsuo | Beautiful, meditative Japanese travel diary written alternately in prose and poetry; 1694 | |
Boswell, John | Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality | Revelatory study of gay people in Western Europe from late Roman Empire to the 14th c.; 1980 |
Butler, Judith P. | Gender Trouble | Controversial study argues that gender identity is a fluid variable changing in different contexts; 1990 |
Caesar, Julius | The extraordinary bisexual Roman general – and later dictator – recounts how he conquered Gaul (later called France); 52 BCE | |
Carpenter, Edward, ed. | Superb same-sex anthology, from antiquity to Whitman, by gay rights pioneer; 1908 | |
Cixous, Hélène | The Book of Promethea | Feminist reinterpretation of myth; 1983 |
Cocteau, Jean | The White Book (Le Livre Blanc) | Unique celebration of being gay; 1928 |
Cook, Blanche Wiesen | Eleanor Roosevelt | Multi-volume biography of humanitarian, and bi, First Lady; 1993 |
Crompton, Louis | Byron and Greek Love | Homophobia in 19th c. England; 1985 |
Doty, Mark | Heaven's Coast | Memoir of his lover's death from AIDS; 1996 |
Duberman, Martin | Stonewall | Lives of six people who participated; 1993 |
Duberman, Martin; et al. | Hidden from History | Fascinating essays on GLBTs throughout both world and US history; 1990 |
Eliot, T.S. | Selected Essays | Eliot's theories about literature are as influential as his poetry; 1951 |
Ellmann, Richard | Oscar Wilde | Definitive biography, and cultural history; 1988 |
Faderman, Lillian | Surpassing the Love of Men | Female romantic friendship, and lesbian life, from the Renaissance to the present; 1981 |
Faderman, Lillian | Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers | Lesbian life in 20th c. America; 1991 |
Fischer, Erica | Aimee & Jaguar: A Love Story | In 1943 Berlin, a Nazi's wife and a fugitive Jewish woman fall in love; 1998 |
Foster, Jeanette Howard | Sex Variant Women in Literature | Landmark study of lesbian, bi and trans women in over 300 literary works, from Sappho to the 1950s; 1956 |
Foucault, Michel | History of Sexuality | On the fluid nature of human desire; 1976 |
Frank, Anne | Diary of a Young Girl (complete ed.) | Uncensored text includes Anne's same-sex feelings; 1997 (ed. O. Frank & M. Pressler) |
Isay, Richard A. | Being Homosexual & Becoming Gay | Two books by insightful gay psychotherapist; 1989 |
Isherwood, Christopher | Christopher and His Kind: 1929–1939 | His memoir of experiences before emigrating to the United States; 1976 |
Johnston, Jill | Lesbian Nation | Classic about lesbian/feminist identity, written in experimental style; 1973 |
Katz, Jonathan Ned | Gay American History | 400 years of GLBTs in America, revealed through original historical documents; 1976 |
Koestenbaum, Wayne | The Queen's Throat | Study of opera, homosexuality and "the mystery of desire;" 1993 |
Lawrence, D.H. | Still-provocative exploration of U.S. literary history, from colonial works through canonical 19th c. authors (many of whom were GLB); 1923 | |
Lawrence, T.E. | Seven Pillars of Wisdom | Memoir by "Lawrence of Arabia;" 1926 |
Leduc, Violette | La Batarde | Passionate, stylistically original autobiography; 1964 |
Lister, Anne | Journal | 19th c. lesbian explores her true self; d. 1840 |
Lorde, Audre | Zami: A New Spelling of My Name | African-American "biomythography;" 1982 |
Lovecraft, H.P. | Landmark study of the genre by perhaps the greatest horror author of all time; 1927 | |
Mann, William J. | Behind the Screen | Landmark history of how gay men and lesbians shaped Hollywood between 1910 and 1969; 2001 |
Marcuse, Herbert | Eros and Civilization | Far-ranging critique of societal repression; 1955 |
Matthiessen, F.O. | American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman | Exploration of five mid-19th c. U.S. authors (Whitman, Melville, Thoreau – and possibly Hawthorne – were gay/bi), created the field of American Studies; 1941 |
McCourt, James | Queer Street | Part memoir, part phantasmagoria – imaginative history of gay life 1947–1985 which "channels" T.S. Eliot, James Baldwin, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal; 2003 |
Mead, Margaret | Coming of Age in Samoa | Landmark study of adolescence and sexual behavior in "primitive" cultures; 1928 |
Miller, Neil | In Search of Gay America | GLBTs from across the USA, in farmlands, small towns, suburbs, & cities; 1989 |
Monette, Paul | Becoming a Man | Searing memoir of how the author came out, and finally learned to love; 1992 |
Mordden, Ethan | Broadway Babies: The People Who Made the American Musical | Toe-tapping introduction to the history of the Broadway musical – Mordden has also written a decade-by-decade history of musicals from the 1920s to today; 1988 |
Murray, Stephen O. & Will Roscoe | Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities [my review] | Groundbreaking collection of anthropological, historical, and sociopolitical studies focused on same-sex relationships in Africa, including woman–woman marriages, alternative gender identities, GLBTs in modern African societies and literature, more; 2001 |
Nicolson, Nigel | Portrait of a Marriage | Revealing portrayal of the politician author's bisexual mother Vita Sackville West (book includes her Diary), and bisexual father; 1973 |
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm | Believed the ideal human could direct passions creatively instead of suppressing them; 1883 | |
Nin, Anaïs | Henry and June | Nin's relationship with author Henry Miller and his wife in 1931/32, culled from uncensored version of her sprawling memoirs; 1986 |
Packard, Chris | Illuminating study of same-sex relationships in the nineteenth century American frontier, drawing on literary, non-fiction, and visual sources; 2005 | |
Pater, Walter | Groundbreaking study of art and poetry, also introduced influential "Art for Art's sake" concepts of Aestheticism and Decadence; 1873 | |
Plato | Socrates & co. drink wine and discuss love; 350 BC (compare Xenophon's Symposium) | |
Plutarch | Incl. gay leaders Lycurgus, Solon, Agesilaus, Alexander the Great, Pelopidas (Sacred Band of Thebes); 100 AD | |
Russo, Vito | Celluloid Closet | GLBTs in Hollywood on- and off-screen; 1981 |
Santayana, George | The Life of Reason | The importance, and pleasure, of enlightened instinct – by the gay Spanish-American philosopher, poet, novelist, and critic; 1905 |
Sarton, May | Journal of a Solitude | Joy and fear of living alone; 1977 |
Saslow, James M. | Pictures & Passions | History of homosexuality in the visual arts; 1999 |
Sedgwick, Eve | Between Men | English Literature and same-sex desire; 1985 |
Shilts, Randy | Conduct Unbecoming | Epic history of GLBs in the military; 1993 |
Sontag, Susan | AIDS & Its Metaphors | On cultural mythologies surrounding AIDS; a complement to Illness as Metaphor; 1989 |
Stoddard, Charles Warren | Subtly homoerotic adventures in Polynesia; 1873 | |
Strachey, Lytton | This first "camp" biography skewers the hypocrisies of Victorian England; 1918 | |
Summers, Claude J., ed. | Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage | Indispensable! 350 entries on GLBT authors, genres, & national literatures; 1995 — its contents are also available online at glbtq.com |
Symonds, John Addington | By a pioneer in same-sex rights, this is also the first gay male autobiography; 1893 | |
Thoreau, Henry David | Provocative meditations on nature, society, and personal freedom; 1854 | |
Thucydides | Long, bloody war between Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta (first great work of History); 431 BC | |
Tripp, C.A. | The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln | Controversial biography explores, and documents, Lincoln's bisexuality; 2004 |
Vanita, Ruth & Saleem Kidwai | Same-Sex Love in India | Readings spanning 2,000 years from literature and history, representing Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and modern traditions; 2000 |
Whitman, Walt | The great poet's visionary autobiography; 1882 | |
Wilde, Oscar | Major essays, incl. "Critic as Artist;" 1891 | |
Williams, Walter L. | Spirit and the Flesh | Native American same-sex traditions; 1986 |
Woolf, Virginia | A Room of One's Own | Landmark essay on women, art, and society; 1929 |
