Welcome to my website with a special focus on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender history.

(Updated 9 December 2014)

It contains numerous articles that I've written over many years, as well as a large selection of primary documents, plus bibliographies and useful links to other websites on LGBTQ history. It also contains some of my writing on non-gay eighteenth-century history and literature.

BOOKS BY RICTOR NORTON
• Mother Clap's Molly House
• My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries
• Myth of the Modern Homosexual
• Gothic Readings 1764-1840
• Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Anne Radcliffe
• Eighteenth Century British Erotica

Academic Papers (PDF files)
• Ann Radcliffe, 'The Shakespeare of Romance Writers'
• Pastoral Homoeroticism and Richard Barnfield
• William Beckford's Newspaper Cuttings
• F*ck Foucault
• Paradigms of Same-Sex Marriage

LINKS
• Links to Queer History Websites
• Links to Reviews of Books on Queer History
• Links to Reviews of Biographies of Gays and Lesbians

MORE ABOUT ME
• Wikipedia Entry
• A Brief Biography
• Photos by me and my partner on Flickr
• My Library on LibraryThing
• My Facebook page

CONTACT ME

This website is archived on the British Library's UK Web Archive.

QUEER CULTURE

LESBIAN HISTORY

THE QUEER CANON
Shakespeare, Whitman, Melville, Henry James, Gide, Cocteau, Censorship, etc.

A HISTORY OF HOMOPHOBIA
Ancient Hebrews, Destruction of Sodom, Roman, Medieval, Heretics and Witches

A HISTORY OF HOMOEROTICA
Pornography, Libertinism, Beefcake, Limericks, Uranian Verse, Teleny, etc.

POSTMODERN QUEER THEORY
A Critique of Social Constructionism
F*ck Foucault (PDF file)

MY DEAR BOY
Gay Love Letters through the Centuries

THE HOMOSEXUAL PASTORAL TRADITION
in English Renaissance Literature

THE GAY SUBCULTURE IN GEORGIAN ENGLAND

HOMOSEXUALITY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND
A Sourcebook of Primary Documents

HOMOSEXUALITY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND
A Sourcebook of Primary Documents

REVIEWS AND CRITIQUES

SOME THOUGHTS ON . . .
The 'Bloody Code'; Marquis de Sade; Ice Skating; Condoms; Cross-Dressing; Flagellation; Suicide; Michelangelo; The Age of Consent; The Word "Prostitute"; Female Prostitution; The Lincoln's Inn Bog House; Infamous Executions; Walter Benjamin's Theory of Cultural Work; Books on Gay History; The Gothic Lady's Library; Andrew Marvell; Criminal Biographies; Horace Walpole; and other topics

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GAY AND LESBIAN HISTORY

THE GEORGIAN UNDERWORLD
Criminal Subcultures in 18th-Century Britain (non-gay)

GRUB STREET CHRONICLES
Early Eighteenth Century Newspaper Reports: A Sourcebook (non-gay)

GOTHIC LITERATURE (non-gay)
• Anthology of Gothic Readings, 1764-1840
• Ann Radcliffe, Mistress of Udolpho
• Aesthetic Gothic Horror

WHAT'S NEW
• The 'Bloody Code'
• Marquis de Sade and the Enlightenment
• Gay Love Letters to Fredric, Lord Leighton
• Ice Skating in the 18th Century
• Scandal in the Isle of Man
• Queers News for 1812; 1813; 1814; 1815; 1816; and 1817
• Lord, Remember Me!
• Condoms: Contraception versus Protection
• Cross-Dressing in the 18th & 19th century
• Flagellation, Historically Considered
• Review of The Abergavenny Witch Hunt of 1942
• Suicide in 18th-cent. England
• Michelangelo and the Label "Homosexual"
• Queer News for 1786
• The Last Men Executed for Sodomy in England
• A gay sex club in 1776
• Edward Carpenter
• The Lincoln's Inn Bog House