The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries From Orlando Furioso (1532), by Ludovico Ariosto (1474--1533) "Elegy for a Lady Fallen for Another Lady" (1573), by Pontus de Tyard (1521--1605) From The Journal of Montaigne's Travels in Italy by Way of Switzerland and Germany (1581), by Michel de Montaigne (1533--1592) "Memorable Stories about Women Who Have Degenerated into Men" (1573), by Ambroise ParC (1510?--1590) "Poem XLIX" from The Maitland Quarto Manuscript (1586), by Anonymous From The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (1590), by Sir Philip Sidney (1554--1586) From Gallathea (1592), by John Lyly (1554?--1606) From As You Like It and Twelfth Night (1600--1602), by William Shakespeare (1564--1616) The King James Bible The Book of Ruth (1611) "On a Lady Named Beloved" (1617), by Anne de Rohan (1584--1646) From Hic Mulier: or, The Man-Woman (1620), by Anonymous From Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished (1626), by George Sandys (1578--1644) "Sapho to Philaenis" (1633), by John Donne (1572--1631) "To Mr. J.D." (c. 1633), by Mr. T.W. "Epigram on the Court Pucelle" (1640), by Ben Jonson (1572--1637) "On the Friendship Betwixt Two Ladies" (1645), by Edmund Waller (1606--1687) "Tribades, or Lesbia" (1646), by Franaois de Maynard (1582--1646) From Upon Appleton House (1650), by Andrew Marvell (1621--1678) "Two Beauties, Tender Lovers" (c. 1650), by Denis Sanguin de Saint-Pavin (1595--1670) From The Life and Death of Mary Frith. Commonly Called Moll Cutpurse (1662), by Anonymous "To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship", by Katherine Philips (1632--1664) From Dialogues on the Arcana of Love and Venus by Luisa Sigea Toletana (1660--78), by Nicolas Chorier (1612--1692) "Parting with Lucasia: A Song"; "Orinda to Lucasia" "Friendship's Mystery: To My Dearest Lucasia" "Injuria Amici" (1664) From Lives of Gallant Ladies (1665--1666), by Pierre de Bourdeilles, Seigneur de Brantime (c. 1540--1614) "To the Fair Clorinda, Who Made Love to Me", by Aphra Behn (1640--1689) "Ines, Dear, with your Love I am Enraptured" (c. 1685) "Verses Design'd by Mrs. A. Behn to be sent to a Fair Lady, that Desir'd She Would Absent Herself to Cure her Love" "Accompanying a Ring Bearing the Portrait of la Se ora Condesa de Paredes. She Explains", by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1648--1695) "On the Soft and Gentle Motions of Eudora" (attr.) (1686) From The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis (1693), by John Dryden (1631--1700) "On a Picture Painted by Herself, Representing Two Nymphs of Diana's, One in a Posture to Hunt, the Other Bathing", by Anne Killigrew (1660--1685) "Love and Friendship: A Pastoral" (1696), by Elizabeth Singer Rowe (1674--1737) The Eighteenth Century "The Ladies of the New Cabal" from The New Atlantis (1709), by [Mary] Delariviare Manley (1663--1724) "Venus's Reply" from 'A Collection of the Most Choice and Private Poems, Lampoons, &c.'(1699), by Anonymous Spectator No. 223 (1711), by Joseph Addison (1672--1719) Translation of Sappho Fragment 31 ("Blest as th'Immortal Gods is He") (1711), by Ambrose Philips (1675?--1749) "Sappho to Phaon" (1712), by Alexander Pope (1688--1744) "Friendship between Ephelia and Ardelia" (1713), by Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea (1661--1720) From Memoirs of the Life of Count Grammont (1713), by Anthony Hamilton (1646?--1720) "Madrigal" (1715), by Pauline de Simiane (1676--1737) "Letter to Madame la Marquise de S[imiane], On Sending her Tobacco" (1715) From the Embassy Letters (1716--18), by Mary Wortley Montagu (1689--1762) "Cloe to Artimesa" (1720), by Anonymous From Monsieur Thing's Origin: or Seignor D--o's Adventures in Britain (1722), by Anonymous From A Supplement to the Onania, or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution (c. 1725), by Anonymous "The Female Cabin Boy" (c. 1730), by Anonymous From Pamela (1740--41) and Sir Charles Grandison (1753--54), by Samuel Richardson (1689--1761) Translation of Sappho Fragment no. 31 ("Happy as a God is He") and no. 130 ("Dire Love, Sweet-Bitter Bird of Prey!") (1735), by John Addison (n.d.) The Female Husband (1746), by Henry Fielding (1707--1754) From the The Sappho-An. An Heroic Poem of Three Cantos, in the Ovidian Style, Describing the Pleasures which the FAIR SEX Enjoy with Each Other (c. 1735), by Anonymous From Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748--49), by John Cleland (1709--1789) "The Game of Flatts" from Satan's Harvest Home (1749), by Anonymous From The Indiscreet Jewels (1748) and The Nun (1760), by Denis Diderot (1713--1784) From A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke (1755), by Charlotte Charke (1713--1760) From Anecdotes of a Convent (1771), by Anonymous From "Dialogue between Sappho and Ninon de l'Enclos, in the Shades" (1773), by Anonymous From The Adulteress (1773), by Anonymous From A History of My Life (1789--98), by Giacomo Casanova (1725--1798) From Juliette (1792), by Marquis de Sade (1740--1814) From the journals of Eleanor Butler (1784--1821), by Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby ("The Ladies of Llangollen") "Elegy Written at the Sea-side, and Addressed to Miss Honoria Sneyd" (c. 1780), by Anna Seward (1742--1809) "In a Letter to A.R.C., On her Wishing to be Called Anna", by Mary Matilda Betham (1776--1852) "Invitation--To J.B.C." From Llangollen Vale, Inscribed to the Right Honourable Lady Eleanor Butler, and Miss Ponsonby (1796) "A Valentine" (1797) The Nineteenth Century From Belinda (1801), by Maria Edgeworth (1767--1849) Christabel (1816), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772--1834) "S.T. Colebritche, Esq." From Christabess: A Right Woeful Poem (1816) From The Diaries of Anne Lister (1824--26), by Anne Lister (1791--1840) From Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835), by Theophile Gautier (1811--1872) From The Girl With the Golden Eyes (1835), by Honore de Balzac (1799--1850) "To the Lady E.B. and the Hon. Miss P., Composed in the Grounds of Plas Newydd, Near Llangollen, 1824" (1824), by William Wordsworth (1770--1850) "A Young Girl Seen in Church" (1838), by Eliza Mary Hamilton (1807--1851) "To George Sand: A Desire" (1844), by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806--61) From Villette (1853), by Charlotte Bronte (1816--1855) "Lesbos", by Charles Baudelaire (1821--1867) "Damned Women 1 (Delphine and Hippolyta)" "Damned Women 2" (1857) Goblin Market (1862), by Christina Rossetti (1830--1894) "Anactoria" (1866), by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837--1909) Lesbia Brandon (1864--67) Scenes of Sapphic Love (1867), by Paul Verlaine (1844--1896) "Her Breast is Fit for Pearls", by Emily Dickinson (1830--1886) "Her sweet Weight on my Heart a Night" "Going--to--Her!" "Ourselves were wed one summer--dear--" "Precious to Me--She still shall be--" "The Stars are old, that stood for me--" "Frigid and sweet Her parting Face--" "To see her is a Picture--" (1851--86) From Desperate Remedies (1871), by Thomas Hardy (1840--1928) "Since I Died" (1873), by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844--1911) Translation of Martial's Epigram VII.67 ("Abhorrent of All Natural Joys") from The Index Expurgatorius of Martial, Literally Translated (1868), by George Augustus Sala (1828--1896) "Felipa" (1876), by Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840--1894) From Nana (1880), by emile Zola (1840--1902) "Paul's Mistress" (1881), by Guy de Maupassant (1850--1893) "Walter" From My Secret Life (1882--1894) "Sinfonia Eroica (To Sylvia)", by Amy Levy (1861--1889) "To Lallie" "Borderland" "At a Dinner Party" From Lila and Colette (1885), by Catulle Mendas (1841--1909) From The Bostonians (1886), by Henry James (1843--1916) "Erinna, Thou Art Ever Fair" "Atthis, My Darling" "Michael Field" [Katherine Harris Bradley (1846--1914) and Edith Cooper (1862--1913)] "Maids, Not to You" "Power in Silence" "Daybreak" "My Lady Has a Lovely Rite" (1889) From The Songs of Bilitis (1894), by Pierre Louos (1870--1925) From A Madman's Manifesto (1895), by August Strindberg (1849--1912) "Before Dark" (1896), by Marcel Proust (1871--1922) Two Excerpts from Cities of the Plain (1921) "Tommy, the Unsentimental" (1896), by Willa Cather (1873--1947) "The Lesbian Hell" (1898), by Aleister Crowley (1875--1947) The Twentieth Century "Marie Madeleine", by [Marie Madeleine von Puttkamer] (1881--1944) "Crucifixion" "Beneath the Surface" "The Unfading" "Vagabonds" (1900) "Woman", by Natalie Barney (1876--1972) "Couplets" (1900) "Sappho Lives Again", by RenCe Vivien (1877--1909) "Words to my Friend" (1901) "Laurence Hope" [Adela Florence Nicolson] (1865--1904) "Kashmiri Song" "From Behind the Lattice" (1901--1905) "Rosabel", by Angelina Weld GrimkC (1880--1958) "Brown Girl" (1901) From Pandora's Box (1903), by Frank Wedekind (1864--1918) "If You Come" (1904), by Lucie Delarue-Mardrus (1874--1945) "Leves Amores" (1907), by Katherine Mansfield (1888--1923) "Friendship" (1919) "The Spirit of Thy Singing", by Radclyffe Hall (1880--1943) "Oh! That Thy Lips Were a Goblet of Crystal" (1910) "Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself" (1926) "Hora Stellatrix", by Amy Lowell (1874--1925) "Stupidity" "Anticipation" "Vintage" "Aubade" "In a Garden" "The Weather-Cock Points South" (1912--1919) "Vernon Lee" [Violet Paget] (1856--1935) "The Amazon on the Fountain" (1914) "Are You Happy?", by Marina Tsvetaeva (1892--1941) "Beneath My Plush Wool Plaid's Caresses" "Tonight, Between Seven and Eight" "How Can I Not Remember" from "The Girlfriend Poems" (1914--15) Letter to the Amazon (1934--36) "In Words, in Their Cold Interlacing", by Sophia Parnok (1885--1933) "At Times Our Premonitions" "Blindly Staring Eyes" "You Sleep, My Companion-Lover" "You Came In" "I, Like a Blind Woman" (1916--32) From "Lifting Belly" (1915), by Gertrude Stein (1874--1946) "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene" (1922) From The Rainbow (1915), by D. H. Lawrence (1885--1930) "Quoi Bon Dire", by Charlotte Mew (1869--1928) "As a Wife Has a Cow: A Love Story" from A Book Concluding with As a Wife Has a Cow: A Love Story (1926) "On the Road to the Sea" "The Road to KCrity" "My Heart Is Lame" (1916) From Regiment of Women (1917), by "Clemence Dane" [Winifred Ashton] (1887--1965) "The Fire" (1917), by Helen Rose Hull (1888--1971) From Despised and Rejected (1918), by "A. T. Fitzroy" [Rose Allatini] (1890?--1980?) "I Can't Feel the Sunshine", by Lesbia Harford (1891--1927) "You Want a Lily" (1918) Letters to Vita Sackville-West (1918--19), by Violet Trefusis (1894--1972) From My Blue Notebooks (1919--41), by Liane de Pougy (1869--1950) From an Unpublished Memoir (1920), by Vita Sackville-West (1892--1962) "Self-Epitaph, Composed By an Honest Sensualist" "She Brought with Careless Hand" "Tess" (1927--1934) "A Dream of Sappho", by Rose O'Neill (1874--1944) "Death Shall Not Ease Me of You" "Mea Culpa" "But If You Come to Me by Day" (1922) From The Flower Beneath the Foot (1923), by Ronald Firbank (1886--1926) "Fragment Thirty-Six" from Heliodora (1924), by H.D. [Hilda Doolittle] (1886--1961) From HERmione (1927) From Mrs. Dalloway (1925), by Virginia Woolf (1882--1941) From Orlando (1928) From The Tortoise-Shell Cat (1925), by Naomi Royde-Smith (1875--1964) "The Pash" (1926), by Thomas Burke (1886--1945) From The Captive (1926), by edouard Bourdet (1887--1945) From Dusty Answer (1927), by Rosamond Lehmann (1901--1990) From Extraordinary Women (1928), by Compton Mackenzie (1883--1972) The Sink of Solitude (1928), by Anonymous "Cassation" (1929), by Djuna Barnes (1892--1982) "The Jungle" (1929), by Elizabeth Bowen (1899--1973) Lesbian Blues Lyrics of the 1920s "Prove It on Me Blues" "B.D. Woman Blues" "Has Anybody Seen My Corinne" From Passing (1929), by Nella Larsen (1891--1964) From Strange Brother (1931), by Blair Niles (1890--1959) From My Thirty Years' War (1930), by Margaret Anderson (1886--1973) "Lesbian-Ape" from The Apes of God (1930), by Wyndham Lewis (1884--1957) From The Pure and the Impure (1932), by Colette (1873--1954) From Spangled Unicorn (1932), by Noal Coward (1899--1973) "The Knife of the Times" (1932), by William Carlos Williams (1883--1963) "Since the First Toss of Gale that Blew", by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893--1978) "Out of Your Left Eye" "I Would Give You Alexander's Bucephalus" "Loved with an L... " "Drawing You, Heavy with Sleep "The Sea Change" (1933), by Ernest Hemingway (1899--1961) From Intimate Memories (1933), by Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879--1962) "The Bathe", by "Henry Handel Richardson" [Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson] (1870--1946) "Two Hanged Women" (1934) From Devoted Ladies (1934), by "M. J. Farrell" [Molly Keane] (1905--1994) "Sappho or Suicide" (1936), by Marguerite Yourcenar (1903--1987) From Of Lena Geyer (1936), by Marcia Davenport (1903--1996) "Breeze Anstey" (1937), by H. E. Bates (1905--1974) From Diana: A Strange Autobiography (1939), by "Diana Frederics" "It is Marvellous to Wake Up Together" (c. 1942), by Elizabeth Bishop (1911--1979) From Two Serious Ladies (1943), by Jane Bowles (1917--1973) Going to Massachusetts (1966) From The Friendly Young Ladies (1944), by Mary Renault (1905--1983) From For Sylvia (1949), by Valentine Ackland (1906--1969) From Olivia (1949), by Dorothy Strachey (1865--1960) "Women Are Like Geography" (1949), by Gertrude Lawrence (1898--1952) From The Price of Salt (1952), by "Claire Morgan" [Patricia Highsmith] (1921--1995) From La BEtarde (1964), by Violette Leduc (1907--1972) "Chagrin in Three Parts" (1967), by Graham Greene (1904--1991) "Zeitl and Rickel" (1968), by Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904--1991) "Memory is All: Alice B. Toklas" (1975), by Janet Flanner (1892--1978)