Homosexuality in Victorian Britain

In this podcast Dr Sean Brady of Birkbeck, University of London looks at British LGBTQ+ History from 1800-1914.

1. Sources: criminal trials, newspaper reportage, legislation, government records and sexology.
2. The difficulty in making an evaluation of what life was like for lesbians or gays during this period.
3. What was the significance of class? Concepts of masculinity. The consequences of being caught.
4. What was the public perception of homosexuality in 1800 and how did this perception change over the 19th century?
5. Comparing Britain with 19th Century France.
6. What outlets did gay and lesbian people have? Was there the development of communities?
7. What was the significance of Victorian morality in defining perceptions and gay people's lives?
8. Were there any people seeking legal change or was there support for seeking legal change during the period? Clause 11.
9. What was the significance of the Oscar Wilde case?
10. How have historians treatment of this period of LGBT history changed over time and what are the current debates?

 

Suggested Reading:

Chiara Beccalossi, Female Sexual Inversion: Same Sex Desires in Italian and British Sexology, c. 1870-1920 (Palgrave Macmillan 2011).

Chiara Beccalossi and Ivan Crozier, A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Age of Empire (eds. Berg 2011).

Sean Brady, Masculinity and Male Homosexuality in Britain 1861-1913 (Palgrave Macmillan 2005 and 2009).

Sean Brady, John Addington Symonds (1840-1893) and Homosexuality: a critical edition of sources (ed. forthcoming Palgrave Macmillan June 2012).

H. G. Cocks, Nameless Offences: Homosexual Desire in the Nineteenth Century (I. B. Taurus, 2003)

Ed Cohen, A Talk on the Wilde Side: Towards a Genealogy of a Discourse on Male Sexualities (Routledge 1993).

Matt Cook, London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885-1914 (Cambridge University Press 2003).

Matt Cook, A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex between Men since the Middle Ages (ed. Greenwood World Publishing 2007).

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (1976, translation 1978 Random House, Allen Lane 1979, Penguin 1981).

Mary McAuliffe and Sonja Tiernan, Tribades, Tommies and Transgressives: Histories of Sexualities: Volume 1 (eds. Cambridge Scholars Press 2008).

Graham Robb, Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century (Picador 2003).

Charles Upchurch, Before Wilde: Sex between Men in Britain's Age of Reform (University of California Press 2009).

Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800 (Longman 1981 and 1989).

Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (Quartet 1977 and 1990).