Queer People

Negotiations and Expressions of Homosexuality, 1700-1800

Chris Mounsey and Caroline Gonda (Eds.)

2007
305 pages
ISBN 9781611482713
Bucknell Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture

This fascinating and diverse collection of essays concerns the lives and representations of homosexuals in the long eighteenth century. The collection addresses and seeks to move beyond the current critical division between essentialists and social constructionists, a division that bedevils the history of sexuality and fissures Queer Theory. Drawing on a wide range of sources as well as theoretical approaches, the essays explore canonical and non-canonical literature, scurrilous pamphlets and court cases, music, religion and politics, consumer culture and sexual subcultures. Eighteenth-century life is depicted here in all its rich variety, from the scandals surrounding Queen Anne to the struggles of laboring-class poets, and from the famous - Defoe, Handel, Boswell, Burney, and the Duchess of Devonshire - to the obscure male frequenters of Mother Clap's Molly House or the anonymous female participants in the extraordinary story of The She-Wedding.

Contributors: Ellen Harris, Sally O'Driscoll, Conrad Brunström, Tanya Cassidy, Joseph Campana, Thomas King, Netta Goldsmith, Ruth Herman, Bridget Keegan, Ruth Smith, Caroline Gonda, Chris Mounsey, and Christine Roulston.

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Reviews
"Queer People...is [a] revisionary work on women writers including Penelope Aubin, Frances Burney, Ann Yearsley, and Mary Leapor. This book...provides a good introduction to the state of the field and its issues and methodologies."
- Backscheider, Paula R. "Recent Studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century." Studies in English Literature 2009: 738.

"In this interesting contribution to queer studies, Mounsey...and Gonda...gather essays depicting 18th-century gay and lesbian culture...Those seeking negotiations between theories will find this collection a formidable starting point. Including a thorough index and extensive references, this book reads well."
- Pruitt, J. CHOICE 2008: 1768.

About the editors:

Chris Mounsey is professor of English at the University of Winchester.

Caroline Gonda is a Fellow and Director of Studies in English at St. Catharine's College, Cambridge. She is the author of Reading Daughters' Fictions, 1709-1834: Novels and Society from Manley to Edgeworth (1996).

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