The Outside Thing: Modernist Lesbian Romance

This book makes a bold case for the significance of romance – both literary genre and the articulation of amatory attachments and desire – in the works and lives of three modern lesbian writers: Gertrude Stein, Radclyffe Hall, and Djuna Barnes. Drawing upon extensive new archival research, The Outside Thing presents romance as a heterosexual space or plot upon which lesbian writers, before and after Radclyffe Hall, wilfully set up camp. It argues, for the first time, that these writers adapted – rather than adopted – the romance genre not in order to evade censorship but as a means of staking a queer claim on a heterosexual institution. The writers here did not submit or surrender to the heterosexual romance plot; instead, they turned it to their advantage. Written at a time when the lesbian is no longer apparitional, invisible, or mythically mannish, The Outside Thing takes its readers inside important early twentieth-century lesbian publications and pairings.