Talk:List of lesbian fiction

Mystery Novels
Are there pages at ALL for any of the series' listed in this section? if so, perhaps somebody should redirect all those red-links to the relevant articles, or perhaps make it a subproject/article drive in WP:LGBT. Or, of course, it could be deleted. Polymathematics 05:39, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Structure of Poets section?
I added a poet (Luz María Umpierre) to the list but just added her at the end. The list is organized chronologically (to a certain respect) but this could be clearer.--Lawrlafo (talk) 19:05, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

This page has serious problems
There is no clear criteria by which we are to even judge which works should be added to this list, let alone how to find sources. What is the difference between works that treat "lesbian themes" in passing versus more substantively? What sources can verify this distinction? I suspect that for the majority of works here there is no secondary source in existence to back up listing it. We need to think about renaming this article. K. the Surveyor (talk) 06:25, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I suggest that we call it "List of books portraying sexual relations between women." With this name the list has a concrete definition, as opposed to the current one that could mean practically anything, from literature containing a person who knows a woman who wants to have sex with a woman to literature where many of the major characters identify as lesbian. K. the Surveyor (talk) 07:05, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm concerned that instead of seeking to source the information or improve it, instead, large sections of text have been deleted and the article has been retitled. I think the new title, while perhaps more literally descriptive, is extremely clunky.

I suggest reverting both the title and the deleted passage until more people have a chance to weigh in on the topic here.

Voila-pourquoi (talk) 21:06, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Much of the information was deleted because it seems quite questionable and unsourced. For example the article had formerly stated that the central work of "lesbian literature" was the poetry of Sappho, without a source. Where did this information come from? Unsourced information can simply be deleted per WP:BURDEN. In fact this entire article could be deleted, but I declined to list it because I think the topic is notable despite the lack of sources. K. the Surveyor (talk) 21:21, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Also, please note that some of the information was only moved to List of poetry portraying sexual relations between women, and was not deleted. K. the Surveyor (talk) 21:32, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I am not an experienced editor at all, and I apologize if I'm out of turn, but I've watched this page for a long time and tried to eliminate graffiti, etc. I find the new name to belittle the literature, which has a 40-year history that can be verified by books like Bonnie Zimmerman's Safe Sea of Women and Lillian Faderman's noted and award-winning research. For nearly 100 years, libraries have cataloged "lesbianism-fiction" without difficulty. The common thread isn't "sexual relations." Having read many of the classics on this list, "sexual relations" is not in many of them; the characters' self-identity is the common thread, and that identity is "lesbian." So I support changing the name back to "List of lesbian literature." I hope I'm not out of turn in weighing in on this issue. --FairySoap (talk) 05:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * You are certainly not out of turn and may change the name back at any time, but keep in mind that this page has no citations. I was planning to add some soon. However, unless the adjective "lesbian" is actually used by a secondary source to classify the novel (e.g. as "lesbian fiction" or the like) then it will not be possible to source under the new name and hence will eventually be removed. So most of this page or maybe even all of it may wind up being deleted as a result. —K. the Surveyor (talk) 06:15, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Requested move (2010)

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: I'm not seeing any arguments for the change of title, nor any way it would fit the article with its current content, so I'm closing this move request. Kotniski (talk) 11:36, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

List of books portraying sexual relations between women → List of lesbian literature‎ — Relisted. Jafeluv (talk) 17:31, 12 November 2010 (UTC) Seeking to revert previous name change by K. the Surveyor. Voila-pourquoi (talk) 23:32, 4 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose. See previous discussion. This page has no sources. Few works seem to be specifically identifiable by any reliable source as "lesbian literature." For Wikipedia editors to independently categorize them constitutes OR. K. the Surveyor (talk) 23:40, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Support Extensive changes to the substance of this article, including its name, by K. the Surveyor do nothing to improve the content or the sources, only to obfuscate the subject matter and marginalize its importance. Voila-pourquoi (talk) 03:40, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Voila, you are certainly within the rules to change the name back even without a discussion, but the works listed here will eventually have to be cited by reliable sources as being examples. That is pretty easy to do with the current title, as one can use the books themselves. But saying whether a book belongs to a particular kind of literature or not requires a secondary source that actually categorizes the work. I suspect that under the old title this list will therefore wind up getting almost totally removed. With this title much can be saved. K. the Surveyor (talk) 04:05, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * This article was proposed for deletion five years ago -- and then kept as is --- after voting by many editors with much greater combined experience of editing wikipedia than either or both of us. If your goal is truly to save and improve the article, then your methods make no sense at all.  The passage you deleted about Sapho is common knowledge that could have been easily substantiated by reference to any number of books. I have begun to add citations for some of these works, which is how it came to be on my watch list in the first place.  Unfortunately your succession of edits have created such a tangle that they will have to be individually evaluated and manually reverted, hopefully by editors with greater experience, patience and skill in these matters than I possess. Voila-pourquoi (talk) 04:29, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Somebody needs to go to the library
...and actually look in the text of these books to find the words to cite. I will do this for the "classic fiction" section sometime in the next month.

Also I am thinking of deleting most of the mystery novels section since it mostly contains characters and authors and not books. —K. the Surveyor (talk) 04:06, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Alert: lists of publications in Articles for deletion
Some lists of books have been added to Articles for deletion. You can find the discussions here. RockMagnetist (talk) 22:54, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Requested move (2014)

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved. Andrewa (talk) 05:27, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

List of books portraying sexual relations between women → List of lesbian fiction – The current name is hopelessly vague in terms of inclusion criteria and fails completely WP:NOTESAL - how much "sexual relations" in the book is sufficient to merit inclusion here? A quick kiss? A single sex scene? Only if the main character is a lesbian? I wasn't able to find any decent sources that group together all books that have women who have sex with women - but we do have sources that group fiction that has focused lesbian thematic content. I think to make the scope more clear, we should rename the article to match the lead article at Lesbian fiction and the category at, and purge this of any instances that wouldn't be called "Lesbian fiction" by reliable sources in terms of their thematic content. There are, I'm sure, a great many books with lesbian characters but which wouldn't be classified as Lesbian fiction - for example the Kay_Scarpetta books have lesbian characters but I don't think they are categorized as "Lesbian fiction" as such. Note: I considered Lesbian literature as well, but I think if a list of lesbian non-fiction works is to be created, it should be a separate list from the fiction one. Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:39, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment the current title is wrong. This is not a list of books, since books can be non-fiction. So whatever happens, the current title should not exist. At the very least "fiction" should be inserted into the title, and after the move, no redirect should exist. -- 65.94.171.126 (talk) 05:53, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:CONCISE. Dralwik&#124;Have a Chat 02:40, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Support Current title presents a severe problem of scoping and inclusion criteria. Proposed title remedies these problems, and is more concise. Xoloz (talk) 17:08, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

New Revision
We'd like to add the statistics of the 2000s books, expanding the summary of Annie of my Mind, summarizing what it's about and also discussing the impact it had on the community. Then I'd still like to add information of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, giving a brief summary and then talk about it's importance and impact, including it's important in today's lesbian literature.

Additionally, we'd like to add research on the developing themes of lesbian literature, specifically those that have contributed to evolutionary perspective of lesbian relationships and individuals, as well as overall development of lesbian literature and critiques. Here are the sources we'll use:

Statistics: Goods Reads Lesbian. (2016). Good Reads. Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=lesbian&from_new_nav=true.

A Second Look: Annie on my Mind Sutton, R. (2007). A Second Look: Annie on My Mind. Horn Book Magazine, 83(5), 543-546.

The Consuming Fruit: Oranges, Demons, and Daughters Carter, K. (1998). The consuming fruit: 'Oranges,' demons and daughters. CRITIQUE: Studies In Contemporary Fiction, (1), 15.

Radtke, S., & Fisher, M. L. (2012). An Examination of Evolutionary Themes in 1950s- 1960s Lesbian Pulp Fiction. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 6(4), 453-468. Retrieved March 15, 2016.

Nealon, C. (2000). Invert History: Tha Ambivalence of Lesbian Pulp Fiction. New Literary History, 31(4), 745-764.

Rabinowitz, P. (2015, April 9). The Serious Business of Pulp Fiction. Retrieved March 22, 2016, from Time.com

Keller, Y. (2005). "Was It Right to Love Her Brother's Wife So Passionately?" Lesbian Pulp Novels and U.S. Lesbian Identity, 1950-1965. American Quarterly, 57(2), 385-410. Retrieved March 22, 2016.

Stratton, S. L. (n.d.). Lesbian Pulp Fiction and Community Formation 1950-1969. Retrieved March 22, 2016. — Preceding unsigned comment added by FlowerAgainstAWall (talk • contribs) 03:46, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

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Extraordinary Women, Compton Mackenzie (1928)
This one links-thru to a Dominican feature-film of the same name, unrelated to the work by Compton Mackenzie. Valetude (talk) 20:06, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, u|Valetude for pointing this out. I've fixed it. IdRatherBeAtTheBeach (talk) 14:37, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Addition
The Lamp and the Bell, a somewhat obscure play published by historical American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, is very sapphic. Millay was herself at least Bisexual. It was published in 1925, I believe. Could another editor add it to the list where appropriate? Atomic putty? Rien! (talk) (talk) 16:17, 29 June 2022 (UTC)