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]
Pre-Stonewall Literature | ||
Ameng of Wu | The Cut Sleeve | 2,500 years of Chinese gay stories; 1910 |
Baldwin, James | Go Tell It on the Mountain | A black Pentecostal teenager discovers the truth about himself and his family; 1953 |
Baldwin, James | Giovanni's Room | Tragedy of a gay man who cannot love; 1956 |
Balzac, Honoré | Vautrin (Jacques Collin) Series | First major gay character – master criminal Vautrin (Jacques Collin) – appears in 5 books of Balzac's monumental series The Human Comedy [following links are to FREE online copies] Lost Illusions I: A Distinguished Provincial at Paris & Lost Illusions II: Eve and David, Scenes from a Courtesan's Life, Father Goriot, & The Deputy of Arcis ; 1833-47 — Balzac also wrote a play entitled Vautrin (1840) |
Balzac, Honoré | Tragic story of a lesbian relationship; 1835 | |
Bannon, Ann | Beebo Brinker | Four landmark "pulp" lesbian novels; 1957-62 |
Barnes, Djuna | Nightwood | Woman seeks a love "not yet in history;" 1936 |
Behn, Aphra | Influential early novel based on an enslaved African prince whom Behn actually knew in Surinam; 1688 | |
Bowen, Elizabeth | Death of the Heart | Lyrical, complex novel about a British teenage girl's troubled coming of age; 1938 |
Bowles, Jane Auer | Two Serious Ladies | Two friends seek happiness in very different ways; 1943 |
Bowles, Paul | The Sheltering Sky | Love triangle among Americans in North Africa; 1949 |
Brophy, Brigid | In Transit | Experimental look at gender; 1969 |
Burroughs, William S | Naked Lunch | Surreal, paranoiac Beat Generation classic; 1959 |
Butler, Samuel | Autobiographical novel about coming of age in Victorian England; 1902 | |
Caminha, Adolfo | O Bom-Crioulo | Brazilian novel of interracial love affair between a sailor and cabin boy; 1895 |
Capote, Truman | Other Voices, Other Rooms | Growing up "different" in the (Gothic) South; 1948 |
Cather, Willa | Courageous immigrant in Nebraska; 1918 | |
Cather, Willa | Death Comes for the Archbishop | 40 years in the lives of two missionary priests in 19th c. American Southwest; 1927 |
Cheever, John | Wapshot Chronicle | A family and a town both falling apart; 1957 |
Colette | Claudine | Adventures of a young French lesbian; 1900 |
Compton-Burnett, I. | More Women than Men | Goings-on at a private all-girl school; 1933 |
Döblin, Alfred | Berlin Alexanderplatz | Experimental epic novel, and a landmark of German literature, about a 1920s ex-con trying to lead a decent life, and his relationships with a tender-hearted call girl and a charismatic criminal; 1929 — Read essay on the novel and Fassbinder's film version |
Douglas, Norman | South Wind | Island paradise, philosophical debates; 1917 |
Flaubert, Gustave | Sentimental Education | Ultimate novel of romantic frustration; 1869 |
Forster, E.M. | Intertwined fates of two unforgettable English families; 1910 | |
Forster, E.M. | Maurice | Young man challenges social, and personal, prejudice to find love; 1913 |
"Frederics, Diana" | Diana: A Strange Autobiography | Real author still unknown in this novel about a lesbian searching for fulfillment; 1939 |
Fuller, Henry Blake | Eligible bachelor pursued by both sexes; 1919 | |
Genet, Jean | Our Lady of the Flowers | Hallucinatory masterpiece about crime and sainthood; 1942 |
Genet, Jean | The Thief's Journal | Picaresque autobiographical novel; 1949 |
Gide, André | The Counterfeiters | Intriguing infidelities in two families; 1926 |
Goytisolo, Juan | Marks of Identity | Life in aftermath of Spanish Civil War; 1966 |
Hall, Radclyffe | The Well of Loneliness | Lesbian couple struggles for acceptance; 1928 |
Hartley, L.P. | The Go-Between | A young boy passes love letters between an aristocratic woman and a farmer, with unexpected consequences; 1953 |
Highsmith, Patricia | The Price of Salt | Young woman and a married mother fall in love; 1952 |
Himes, Chester | Yesterday Will Make You Cry | Life and love in 1930s Southern prison (unexpurgated ed.; orig. pub. as Cast the First Stone); 1955 |
Huysmans, Joris-Karl | French Decadent classic, inspired Wilde; 1884 | |
Isherwood, Christopher | Berlin Stories | Autobiographical tales of a gay Briton in pre-WW II Germany; 1939 |
Isherwood, Christopher | A Single Man | Masterpiece about one day in the life of a gay Brtish professor in L.A.; 1964 |
James, Henry | Suffragists face many difficult choices; 1886 | |
Jewett, Sarah Orne | Subtle stories about a young woman's summer at a coastal Maine town; 1896 | |
Kerouac, Jack | The Subterraneans | "Cleaned up" version of the author's affair with Gore Vidal; 1958 |
Kipling, Rudyard | In India, orphaned son of an Irish soldier grows up on the mean streets of Lahore, then turns to spying for the Raj; 1901 | |
Kuzmin, Mikhail | Wings | Astonishing Russian coming out novel; 1906! |
Lagerlöf, Selma | The Story of Gösta Berling (aka Gösta Berling's Saga) | A dashing young cavalier's adventures, both realistic and supernatural, in 1820s Sweden; 1891 — first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature |
Larsen, Nella | Passing | Black women confront racism and passion; 1929 |
Lawrence, D.H. | Complex, ambivalent gay content; 1920 | |
Lezama Lima, Jose | Paradiso | Cuban mix of memoir, fiction, poetry; 1966 |
Mann, Klaus | Pathetic Symphony | On Tchaikovsky, by Thomas Mann's son; 1935 |
Mann, Thomas | Tonio Kröger | Latent homosexual artist comes of age; 1903 |
Mann, Thomas | Death in Venice | Author destroyed by obsession for boy; 1912 |
Mansfield, Katherine | Subtle, penetrating fiction from New Zealand author, incl. In a German Pension, 1911; Bliss, 1920; Garden Party, 1922 | |
Maugham, Somerset | Stockbroker flees to Tahiti to paint; 1919 | |
McCullers, Carson | The Heart is a Lonely Hunter | Southern Gothic tale of love and loneliness in a small town; 1940 |
McCullers, Carson | The Member of the Wedding | Tomboy wants to fit in yet be herself; 1946 |
Meeker, Ralph | Better Angel | A young man's sexual awakening; 1933 |
Melville, Herman | Life, and love, on doomed whaling ship; 1851 | |
Melville, Herman | Beautiful sailor and his sadistic nemesis; 1891 | |
Miller, Isabel | Patience and Sarah | Based on historical 19th c. 'married' couple; 1967 |
Mishima, Yukio | Confessions of a Mask | Sinister coming out novel from Japan; 1949 |
Montherlant, Henry de | The Bachelors | Poignant tale of two formerly aristocratic bachelors, an elderly uncle and his nephew, now living in squalor; 1934 |
Murdoch, Iris | The Bell | Superb comedy/drama about a closeted gay man who founds a utopian lay religious community; 1958 |
Musil, Robert | Young Törless | Sadism at a German boarding school; 1906 |
Nabokov, Vladimir | Pale Fire | A novel in the form of revealing footnotes to a poem; 1962 |
Nafzawi, Shaykh Umar ibn Muhammad | Glory of the Perfumed Garden: The Missing Flowers | Homoerotic sections of the medieval Arabic book that were suppressed in the famous 1886 translation by Richard Burton; orig. circa 1200, published 1975 |
Pater, Walter | Passionate friendships during the era of Emperor Marcus Aurelius; 1885 | |
Proust, Marcel | Remembrance of Things Past | Sprawling, evocative Modernist classic about memory and desire; 1922 |
Rechy, John | City of Night | Young hustler plies his trade across the entire USA; 1963 |
Renault, Mary | The Last of the Wine | Relationship of two young Athenians during Peloponnesian War (Renault's first novel set in the ancient world); 1956 |
Richardson, Dorothy | Pilgrimage | First stream of consciousness novel; lesbian author's autobiographical fiction – the full-length section entitled Pointed Roofs is available free online; 1915–1938 |
Richardson, Henry Handel | Australian lesbian author’s coming of age tale set at a girl’s boarding school; 1910 | |
Rule, Jane | Desert of the Heart | Groundbreaking novel of a lesbian relationship, set in 1950s Nevada; 1964 |
Saba, Umberto | Ernesto | Italian bisexual comes of age; 1953 |
Saikaku, Ihara | Great Mirror of Male Love | Courtly, misogynistic stories from Japan; 1684 |
Sand, George (Amantine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin) | Lélia | A woman comes to question traditional views on men, love, and religion; 1833 |
Scott, Sarah | Millenium Hall | "Happily unmarried" women friends; 1762 |
Somerville, Edith & Violet Martin | The Real Charlotte | Intense relationship of two cousins; often considered the finest 19th c. Irish novel; 1894 |
Staël, Madame de | Corinne; or Italy | Romantic tragedy of an Italian woman of genius and a noble Englishman; 1807 |
Stein, Gertrude | Powerful novellas about three working class women; 1909 | |
Stein, Gertrude | Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas | Stein writes her own lover's autobiography; 1933 |
Stevenson, Edward Prime- | Imre | First openly gay American novel (published under pseudonym "Xavier Mayne"); 1906 |
Taylor, Bayard | Two young men seek happiness together; 1870 | |
Taylor, Valerie | The Girls in 3-B | Representative and fun lesbian pulp novel, about three young working women sharing a Chicago apartment; 1959 |
al-Tifashi, Ahmad | The Delight of Hearts | Homoerotic poetry and stories from the Arabic Middle Ages; circa 1250 |
Vidal, Gore | The City and the Pillar | Gay man desperate to rekindle first love; 1948 |
Vidal, Gore | Julian | Epic, and witty, recreation of the life of Emperor Julian (331–363 A.D.) who tried to restore Classical civilization to the Roman Empire which was being taken over by Christian zealots (who branded him "Julian the Apostate"); 1964 |
Vogel, Bruno | Alf | Two German boys in love pre-WW I; 1929 |
Walpole, Hugh | Herries Chronicles | Series of four best-selling historical novels set in 18th century Britain: Rogue Herries, Judith Paris, The Fortress, and Vanessa (1930) |
Waugh, Evelyn | Brideshead Revisited | Two former lovers come to lead very different lives; 1945 |
Weirauch, Anna | The Scorpion | Landmark German lesbian novel; 1919 |
Welch, Denton | In Youth is Pleasure | Coming of age tale by paraplegic author; 1945 |
Wilde, Oscar | About Shakespeare's young lover – or is it?; 1889 | |
Wilder, Thornton | Heaven's My Destination | Exploits of a "holy fool" traveling salesman; 1935 |
Wilhelm, Gale | Torchlight in Valhalla | Daughter of a famous painter is torn between her love for a man and a young woman; 1938 |
Wilson, Angus | Hemlock and After | Gay writer's problems with wife and lover; 1952 |
Wister, Owen | This archetypal novel of the Old West is rich in homoerotic subtext; 1901 | |
Woolf, Virginia | Mrs. Dalloway | Repressed hostess contemplates her life; 1925 |
Woolf, Virginia | To the Lighthouse | Two days, 10 years apart, in a family's life; 1927 |
Yourcenar, Marguerite | Memoirs of Hadrian | Great Roman Emperor's quest for truth, and love for a Greek youth; 1951 |
Yourcenar, Marguerite | The Abyss | Gay pre-Renaissance alchemist Zeno; 1968 |
