GLBT Literature: Overlooked GLBT Fiction Authors
Not on the Publishing Triangle's "100 Best" List
The Publishing Triangle's "100 Best Lesbian and Gay Non-Fiction Books" shows some of the immense diversity of this form of GLBT literature, but it excludes many outstanding authors and pivotal works about history, philosophy, religion, the natural and social sciences, as well as the visual arts, music, literature, theatre and film. That's why I put together this list of 100 more outstanding GLBT authors, each represented by one (or sometimes two closely-related) non-fiction books. All works are in prose, although a few editions also include an author's poetry. There is also a list of Overlooked GLBT Fiction Authors; and Recommended GLBT Books includes sections for Non-Fiction, Drama, Poetry, Fiction — including many titles not listed below — and more. More GLBT Arts Resources: GLBT Cinema, GLBT Classical Music, GLBT Literature, GLBT Visual Arts, essay "Why a GLBT Focus?"
Because of censorship, which varied widely during the many centuries and countries represented here, some of these authors were unable to acknowledge their sexual orientation openly in their writing. For more information, I recommend the indispensable glbtq.com, an encyclopedia of GLBT connections to the arts, literature, and social sciences.
All links below are to FREE, unabridged online copies — the books will open in a new window. Enjoy!
100 Overlooked GLBT Non-Fiction Authors
- Anger, Kenneth — Hollywood Babylon
- Auden, W.H. — The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays
- Augustine of Hippo [St. Augustine] — Confessions
- Bacon, Francis (1561–1626) — The Essays, Civil and Moral
- Bacon, Francis (1909–1992) (with David Sylvester) — The Brutality of Fact
- Bagemihl, Bruce — Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity
- Baldwin, James — The Fire Next Time & Nobody Knows My Name [two related books]
- Barney, Natalie Clifford — Thoughts of an Amazon & More Thoughts of an Amazon [two related books]
- Barthes, Roland — S/Z
- Bashô, Matsuo — Narrow Road to the Deep North
- Beaton, Cecil — Self Portrait with Friends: The Selected Diaries of Cecil Beaton, 1926–1974
- Benedict, Ruth — Patterns of Culture
- Bernstein, Leonard — The Unanswered Question
- Bishop, Elizabeth (ed. by Robert Giroux) — One Art: Letters
- Bowles, Jane (Auer) — Letters
- Bowles, Paul — Their Heads are Green and Their Hands are Blue
- Brecht, Bertolt — Brecht on Theatre
- Burroughs, William S. — The Adding Machine
- Byron, George Gordon, Lord (ed. by Leslie A. Marchand) — Letters and Journals
- Caesar, Julius — Commentaries on the Gallic Wars
- Cage, John — Silence: Lectures and Writings
- Cammermeyer, Margarethe — Serving in Silence
- Carson, Rachel — Silent Spring
- Casement, Roger — The Black Diaries
- Cellini, Benvenuto (trans. by gay-rights pioneer John Addington Symonds) — Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
- Cixous, Hélène — The Book of Promethea
- Cocteau, Jean — The White Book & Diary of a Film: Beauty and the Beast [two contrasting books]
- Colette (Sidonie Gabrielle) — The Pure and the Impure
- Copland, Aaron — What to Listen for in Music
- Coward, Noël (ed. by Graham Payn & Sheridan Morley) — The Noël Coward Diaries
- Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la (trans. by Electa Arenal & Amanda Powell) — The Answer / La Respuesta
- Cullen, Countee — My Soul's High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen, Voice of the Harlem Renaissance
- Dickinson, Emily (ed. by Thomas Johnson) — Letters
- Doty, Mark — Heaven's Coast
- Eisenstein, Sergei — The Film Sense & The Film Form [two related books]
- Eliot, T.S. — Selected Essays
- Fassbinder, Rainer Werner (ed. by Michael Töteberg & Leon A. Lensing) — Anarchy of the Imagination: Interviews, Essays, Notes
- Flanner, Janet — Paris Journal
- Forster, E.M. — Aspects of the Novel
- Frederick II [Frederick the Great (1712–1786)] (ed. by Jay Luvaas) — Frederick the Great on the Art of War
- Genet, Jean — Prisoner of Love
- Goodman, Paul — Growing Up Absurd
- Goytisolo, Juan — Forbidden Territory
- Hart, Moss — Act One: An Autobiography
- Hildegard of Bingen (trans. by Sabina Flanagan) — Secrets of God: Writings of Hildegard of Bingen
- Hopkins, Gerard Manley — Spiritual Writings
- Hughes, Langston — The Big Sea: An Autobiography
- Humboldt, Alexander von, Baron — Cosmos
- Jarman, Derek — Dancing Ledge
- James, Henry — The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces
- Kerouac, Jack — The Scripture of the Golden Eternity
- Ladies of Llangollen (Lady Eleanor Butler & the Honorable Sarah Ponsonby) (ed. by Mrs. G.H. Bell) — The Hamwood Papers of the Ladies of Llangollen
- Lawrence, D.H. — Studies in Classic American Literature & Apocalypse [two related books]
- Lawrence, T.E. ["Lawrence of Arabia"] — Seven Pillars of Wisdom
- Leduc, Violette — La Bâtarde
- Leonardo da Vinci — Notebooks
- Lincoln, Abraham (ed. by Arthur Brooks Lapsley) — The Writings of Abraham Lincoln
- Lister, Anne — Diaries
- Lovecraft, H.P. — Supernatural Horror in Literature
- Mann, Thomas — Essays of Three Decades
- Mann, William J. — Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood 1910–1969
- Marcuse, Herbert — Eros and Civilization
- Matthiesen, F.O. — American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman
- Mead, Margaret — Coming of Age in Samoa
- Melville, Herman — Typee & Omoo [two related books]
- Michelangelo Buonarroti (trans. by Creighton Gilbert) — Letters (in Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo)
- Mordden, Ethan — Broadway Babies: The People Who Made the American Musical
- Murdoch, Iris — Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals
- Nietzsche, Friedrich — Thus Spake Zarathustra
- Nin, Anaïs — Henry and June
- Orton, Joe (ed. by John Lahr) — The Orton Diaries
- Pasolini, Pier Paolo (ed. by Oswald Stack) — Pasolini on Pasolini
- Plutarch — Parallel Lives of Noble Greeks and Romans
- Proust, Marcel — Contre Sainte-Beuve
- Przhevalsky, Nikolai Mikhailovich — Mongolia, the Tangut Country, and the Solitudes of Northern Tibet
- Rustin, Bayard (ed. by Devon W. Carbado & Donald Weise) — Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
- Sackville-West, Vita & Nigel Nicolson — Portrait of a Marriage
- Sand, George (Amantine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin) — The Story of My Life
- Santayana, George — The Life of Reason
- Sarton, May — Journal of a Solitude
- Saslow, James M. — Pictures & Passions: A History of Homosexuality in the Visual Arts
- Schubert, Franz (ed. Otto Deutsch) — Franz Schubert's Letters and Other Writings
- Sedaris, David — Naked
- Sontag, Susan — Against Interpretation & Styles of Radical Will [two related books]
- Staël, Madame de (Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, Baroness de Staël-Holstein) — A Treatise on the Influence of the Passions Upon the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations
- Stoddard, Charles Warren — South-Sea Idyls
- Strachey, Lytton — Eminent Victorians
- Sullivan, Louis H. — The Autobiography of an Idea
- Taylor, Bayard — At Home and Abroad: A Sketch-Book of Life, Scenery, and Men
- Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich (ed. by Modeste Tchaikovsky) — Letters
- Thomson, Virgil — Words With Music: A Composer's View
- Thoreau, Henry David — Walden
- Warhol, Andy — The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
- Weston, Edward (ed. by Nancy Newhall) — The Daybooks of Edward Weston
- White, Minor — Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations
- White, Patrick — Flaws in the Glass: A Self-Portrait
- Whitman, Walt — Specimen Days
- Williams, Tennessee (ed. by Albert J. Devlin & Nancy M. Tischler) — Selected Letters
- Williams, Walter L. — The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture
- Wittgenstein, Ludwig — Philosophical Investigations
Site search
This search engine covers the entire website (GLBT literature, film, and all other pages) — results will open in a new window. You can also use the site map.