If you fancy a more serious account of lesbian history (without sexual innuendoes and constant cussing), Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women by Leila J. Rupp (New York University Press, 2009) is ace. Some other great sources include No Modernism Without Lesbians by Diana Souhami (Head of Zeus, 2020), The Lesbian History Sourcebook: Love and sex between women in Britain from 1780 to 1970 by Alison Oram and Annmarie Turnbull (Routledge, 2001), and Queer: A Graphic History by Meg-John Barker, illustrated by Jules Scheele (Icon Books, 2016).
Sappho lovers should check out the first season of the podcast Sweetbitter, while History is Gay is great for stories of forgotten queers. Hildegard of Bingen’s vulva drawings that were definitely and apparently not vulva drawings are in Hildegard von Bingen: A Journey into the Images by Sara Salvadori (Skira, 2019). For some hardcore lesbian action (joke) you can read The Ladies of Llangollen: A Study in Romantic Friendship by Elizabeth Mavor (Michael Joseph, 1971). I’m sorry, but ‘romantic friendship’ – what does that even mean? For some actual hardcore lesbian action, see The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, 2 vols, edited by Helena Whitbread (Virago, 2010, 2020).
If you want to read more (than what I provided you with) on Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Henry Havelock Ellis, Sigmund Freud, or any other silly sexologist, then please feel free to find them yourself.
There are some Natalie Barney bits in Wild Heart: A Life by Suzanne Rodriguez (Ecco, 2002). Or if you just fancy crying into your pillow and/or hating yourself instead, then you can read The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall (Penguin, 2015).
In Love Letters: Vita and Virginia (Vintage, 2021), not only do they talk about falling in love with each other, but they also talk about dogs, travelling, Vita’s hilarious mother, as well as Vita’s other girlfriends. It’s a hoot! Vita’s intense private memoir was published by her son Nigel Nicolson in Portrait of a Marriage (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973). This is the one with Violet Keppel and the two-seater plane. Also, more Lady Sackville content. Virginia’s diary is edited by Anne Olivier Bell (Penguin, 1985), and you can read Virginia’s letters in a mighty six volumes, edited by Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann (Hogarth Press, 1975–1980). The letters contain some really funny exchanges between Virginia and Ethel Smyth and how Ethel clearly gets on Virginia’s nerves.
There’s more on Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Gladys Bentley and the Harlem Renaissance in Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance by James F. Wilson (The University of Michigan Press, 2010). A photograph of the best-written letter in history from Billie Holiday to Tallulah Bankhead is included in Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday by Robert O’Meally (Da Capo Press, 2000). Mercedes de Acosta’s tell-all memoir is called Here Lies the Heart (Andre Deutsch, 1960). This is the one that really pissed off Greta Garbo.
For more information on the DOB check out Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights by Marcia M. Gallo (Seal Press, 2007). An almost complete run of The Ladder is available on Internet Archive. Lorraine Hansberry’s letter, signed LHN, was originally published in The Ladder vol. 1 no. 8 (May 1957), reprinted in The Ladder, vol. 1 and 2, introduced by Barbara Grier (pseudonym: Gene Damon) (Arno Press, 1975). Read about the legend that is Lorraine Hansberry in her own words in To Be Young, Gifted and Black, adapted by Robert Nemiroff, introduced by James Baldwin (Vintage, 1996).
If you want some groundbreaking intersectional feminist work, head to Barbara Smith’s ‘A Press of Our Own: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press’, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 10, no. 3 (1989), Adrienne Rich’s ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’, Signs 5, no. 4 (1980), and This Bridge Called My Back, Fourth Edition: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa (State University of New York Press; 4th edition, 2015). There’s an excellent interview with Barbara Smith, amongst others, in How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Haymarket Books, 2012). You will need to Google Barbara Vick and the San Diego Blood Sisters, because nobody has written a book yet, and while you’re at it, check out lesbianherstoryarchives.org and lesbianavengers.com. tatiana de la tierra’s amazing ‘Ode to Unsavory Lesbians’ was printed in a chapbook of the same name on a single sheet of pink paper in 2004.
Lesbian in Literature: A Bibliography by Barbara Grier (Naiad Press, 1981) contains Grier’s hilarious ratings on lesbian content, including the infamous T for Trash. For more Alison Bechdel there is the amazing long-running comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For (1983–2008), along with Fun Home (2006). If you want to understand how the Bechdel test works, listen to Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus’s podcast, The Bechdel Cast, which hilariously reviews movies to see if they pass (spoiler: they rarely do).
The website for Coalition of African Lesbians can be found here: cal.org.za. Founding member Naome Ruzindana also features in the documentary Call Me Kuchu (2012), which focuses on the LGBTQI+ community in Uganda and on the murder of David Kato.
Further sources include: The Life and Legend of Catterina Vizzani: Sexual identity, science and sensationalism in eighteenth-century Italy and England by Clorinda Donato (Liverpool University Press, 2020); The Favourite: Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough by Ophelia Field (Hodder & Stoughton, 2002), though if you can’t be arsed, then just watch The Favourite (2018) instead; The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, 3 vols, edited by Margaret Smith (Clarendon Press, 1995–2004); the unfortunately named Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Rebecca Primus of Royal Oak, Maryland, and Addie Brown of Hartford, Connecticut, 1854–1868, edited by Farah Jasmine Griffin (Knopf, 1999); Selected Works of Angelina Weld Grimké, edited by Carolivia Herron (Oxford University Press, 1991); Women’s Football: The Secret History by Tim Tate (John Blake, 2016); The History of Women’s Football by Jean Williams (Pen & Sword, 2021); an account of Maud Allan’s court case is included in Court Number One: The Old Bailey Trials that Defined Modern Britain by Thomas Grant (John Murray, 2019); Empty Without You: The Intimate Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok, edited by Rodger Streitmatter (Simon & Schuster, 1998); Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, edited by Mirjam Pressler and Otto Frank, translated by Susan Massotty (Penguin, 2001).