In terms of English (and French) classics, there seem to be a surprisingly high number of queer writers amongst them. A few which spring to mind are
* Oscar Wilde (in you face out, in the highly intolerant London 1890s)
* Henry Miller (aka The Master - although I prefer Edith Wharton as a writer)
* Proust ("extreme mummies boy", more liberal 1910s Paris)
* Thomas Mann (1900s married with 6 kids but lived in a painful state of psychological torment over his attraction to young men?)
* EM Forster (1920 Maurice)
* Christopher Isherwood's 1930's classic "Goodbye To Berlin"
* James Baldwin (1950 Giovanni's Room)
* Armistice Maupin (70s/80s) Tales of the City (gay liberation in Sans Fransico)
* Jeanette Winterson - Why be Happy When You Could be Normal?
* Sarah Waters - one of my favourite writers and IMO going to become a classic
I recently had the pleasure of re-reading Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1890) for the Amsterdam Queer Bookclub, and as well as the joy of revisiting this old friend. I read parts of it plus listened to a wonderful new Stephen Fry recording (Stephen Fry has the perfect voice for Wilde's prose and wit. I also saw a little bit on Netflix: a beautiful production, wonderfully acted and a great set, for me, Colin Firth rather stole the show as a particularly Faustian Lord Henry.
One intriguing detail we discussed in the book club that trio of the three main characters represent different perspectives on Wilde himself i.e. something along the lines of:
* Basil Hallward - as Wilde saw himself?
* Lord Henry Wotton - as the world saw Wilde
* Dorian Gray - as Wilde himself would have liked to have been seen!?
well, I'm almost certainly misquoting this significantly, but I'm intrigued and want to dig into this idea further?
