Lesbian Dames

John C. Beynon is Associate Professor in the English Department at California State University, Fresno. He served as assistant editor for 'The Encyclopedia of Gay Histories and Cultures' (2000) and has published essays on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 'Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure', and William Beckford's childhood. He is currently working on a study of the role tea plays in early modern British culture. Caroline Gonda is a Fellow and Director of Studies in English at St Catharine's College, UK. Her essays have appeared in 'Romanticism: The Journal of Romantic Culture and Criticism', 'Women's Writing', 'The British Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies', and 'SEL: Studies in English Literature'. She is the author of 'Reading Daughters' Fictions, 1709-1834: Novels and Society from Manley to Edgeworth', (1996).

'Tory lesbians, Gothic prioresses, female husbands, coquettes, tommies and tribades: these eighteenth-century figures, so important in lesbian history, are brought together for the first time in this lively and thorough anthology. The first collection to focus on women’s same-sex desire in the long eighteenth century, Lesbian Dames is an indispensable resource for students, scholars and readers. ' Lisa L. Moore, The University of Texas at Austin, USA 'This collection of classic and new essays on intimacies between women covers a long historical range, from the seventeenth into the nineteenth century. Some of the best theorists and historians of female and queer sexualities contribute to the broadest and richest historical vision of lesbian identities and relations to date, a vision that promises a future lesbian historiography integrating work across literary and historical periods and theoretical viewpoints.' Kristina Straub, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

• Lesbian Dames: Sapphism in the Long Eighteenth Century