The University of Kansas Libraries
- Articles & Databases
- Catalog: books & more
- E-journals
- Research by Subject
- Course Reserves
- Library Pages A-Z
Snyder Book Collection Contest
Sample essays
Rebecca K. Conn, Rhinelander, WI - graduate student in English;
"Queer Life and Culture in England, c.1900-c.1940: A Bibliography of Queer Artists, Authors, Actors and
Their Works"
This bibliography contains items relating to the experience and expression of queer identities in the arts in early twentieth century England. The items were acquired over a period of approximately eight years as a part of the collector’s ongoing academic work on queer life, art and culture in late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century Great Britain. All items were chosen based on their relevance to one or more of these topics, their complementary and/or supplementary relationships to one another and their emphasis on elucidating queer behaviors and identities during the stated time period. At present, the collection is used as a source of provenance for the collector’s master’s thesis on queerness, the public sphere and London theater between the wars. Beyond that, it forms the base of a constantly expanding scholarly, critical and historical collection focused on expressions and experiences of queerness in English arts, letters and society at the turn of the century and after.
It is necessary to explain here what is meant by the term “queer.” It is meant to describe those sexual and gender practices and ideologies that resist being subsumed or destroyed by the heteronormative. Therefore, it is actually the heteronormative which requires explanation. In the introduction to Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory (1993), Warner characterizes it as “the depth of the culture’s assurance (read: insistence) that humanity and heterosexuality are synonymous” (xxiii). The presumption that it does, once did or ever will encompass the whole of what counts as humanity is a fantasy. To indulge in this fantasy is to deny or ignore the validity of any ideologies, persons and behaviors which exist outside the boundaries of whatever a given culture deems sexually and socially normative. Therefore, to be queer is to resist co-option into the fantasy that the heteronormative is the only, original behavioral possibility.
During the early twentieth century, concepts of what queerness was and how it was to be expressed were in considerable flux. Medical and legal authorities pathologized same-sex sexual acts and non-normative gender behavior, and, at the same time, self-identified queer subgroups and social organizations were developed. Since men and women of different classes, ranks and occupations understood and performed their non-normative sexualities and genders differently, many of these subgroups were specific to a fairly narrow spectrum of queers. The demimonde frequented by photographer Cecil Beaton (#22, 27), for example, was as closed to middle-class photographer Montague Glover as Glover’s own world of comradeship with working-class men was to Beaton (#23).
Despite the disparities between the philosophies and behaviors allowed by each group, however, none of them operated in isolation. It would have been difficult for most persons, queer or otherwise, to have been unaware of Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas’ repeated and highly public repudiations of his relationship with Oscar Wilde and dubious assertions of his own contented heterosexuality (#20). Similarly, literary works like Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928) (#38) gained sufficient notoriety to affect the general conception of what it meant to be and act as a lesbian. Therefore, this bibliography contains works about as many forms and expressions of queerness as possible. It is hoped that, through the presentation and study of items on such diverse beliefs and behaviors, a more complete but by no means more unified picture of what it once meant to be queer in England will emerge.
In future, the collection is expected to grow much as it has to date: through the careful perusal of used bookshops, publisher’s catalogues, university library catalogues and online booksellers for rare and obscure items, canonical texts and new biographies of long-forgotten queer individuals. Since many of the works desired for the collection, like Ernest Thesiger’s 1927 memoir Practically True, are rare, expensive and/or difficult to find, the primary means of expanding the collection is simply persistent searching for cheaply priced goods. Anything more systematic is at present financially impossible and, beyond that concern, the most obscure queer items generally cannot be located without physically searching for them on bookstore shelves. However, since the collection is an ongoing, long-term project, improved resources and the passage of years will ideally see the collection expand into an entity of 1,000 items or more, appropriate for eventual donation to a research library or queer history archive.
top