BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GAY AND LESBIAN HISTORY Compiled by Rictor Norton
INDEX: [General History] [Anthologies] [Lesbian: General] [Pre-Modern Lesbian] [Modern Lesbian] [Literary History] [Language] [Art & Film] [Theory] [Famous Homosexuals] [Anthropology] [Ancient] [Medieval] [Early Modern] [Renaissance] [English Early Modern] [English Modern] [German] [Dutch] [Spain & Portugal] [Pre-Modern American] [Modern American] [China, India and Japan] [Middle East] [Latin America] [Africa] [Colonial and Non-European]
Updated 25 May 2009

French History

Barbadette, Gilles and Carassou, Michel: Paris Gay 1925. Paris: Presses de Renaissance, 1981.
Benstock, Shari: "Paris lesbianism and the politics of reaction, 1900-1940", in Duberman et al., Hidden from History, 1989, pp. 332-46.
Boisson, Jean: Le triangle rose: la deportation des homosexuels, 1933-1945. Paris: R. Laffont, 1988.
Bonnet, Marie-Jo: Un Choix sans équivoque: Recherches historiques sur les relations amoureuses entre les femmes XVIe-XXe siècle. Paris: Denoël, 1981.
Brassai: Le Paris secret des annees 30. Paris: Gallimard, 1976. Reprinted by Pantheon. Excellent illustrations, notably "La bal des invertis au bal de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve vers 1932" and "Le Bal de la Montagne Sainte-Genevieve, un bal musette".
Cady, Joseph: "The 'masculine love' of the 'Princes of Sodom', 'Practising the Art of Ganymede' at Henri III's court: The homosexulaity of Henri III and his mignons in Pierre de L'Estoile's Mémoires-Journaux", in J. Murray and K. Eisenbichler (eds), Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996, pp. 124-54.
Colwill, Elizabeth: "Pass as a woman, act like a man: Marie-Antoinette as tribade in the pornography of the French Revolution", in Merrick and Ragan, Homosexuality in Modern France (1996), pp. 54-79.
Copley, Antony R.H.: Sexual Moralities in France, 1780-1980: New Ideas on the Family, Divorce, and Homosexuality. London and New York: Routledge, 1989.
Courouve, Claude: Bibliographie des homosexualites. Nouvelle edition. Paris: C. Courouve, 1978.
Courouve, Claude (ed.): Les assemblées de la manchette: documents sur l'amour masculin au XVIIIe siècle. 1987.
Courouve, Claude: "Sodomy trials in France", Gay Books Bulletin, 1 (1978), pp. 22-3, 26.
Courouve, Claude and R. Kozerawski: Fragments 1-4, Collection archives unisexuelles, 1980-1.
Coward, D. A.: "Attitudes to homosexuality in eighteenth-century France", Journal of European Studies 10 (1980), pp. 249-50. Reprinted in Wayne R. Dynes and Stephen Donaldson (eds), History of Homosexuality in Europe and America, New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1992), pp. 35-59.
Daniel, Marc: "A study of homosexuality in France during the reign of Louis XIII and Louis XIV", trans. Marcel Martin, Homophile Studies: ONE Institute Quarterly, nos. 14 and 15 (1961), pp. 77-93 and 125-36. Informative and well documented. Good section on the circle of Theophile de Viau.
Delon, Michel: "The priest, the philosopher, and homosexuality in Enlightenment France", Eighteenth Century Life, 9 (1985), pp. 122-31.
Gunther, Scott E.: "Alors, Are We 'Queer' Yet?", The Gay & Lesbian Review, 12 (3) (May-June 2005): 23-5.
Gunther, Scott E.: "Building a more stately closet: French gay movements since the early 1980s", Journal of the History of Sexuality, 13 (3) (2004): 326-47.
Gunther, Scott E.: La Construction de l'identité homosexuelle dans les lois aux Etats-Unis et en France, Mémoire de DEA, 1995, Ecole Normale Supérieure. Available onlilne
Gunther, Scott E.: The Elastic Closet: Legal Censure and Auto-Censure of Homosexuality in France, Ph.D. Dissertation, New York University, 1999.
Gunther, Scott E.: The Elastic Closet: A History of Homosexuality in France, 1942-present (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). Table of Contents and Introduction. Also available from Amazon.co.uk
Gunther, Scott E.: "France: History and politics", Reader's Guide to Gay and Lesbian Studies, ed. Timothy Murphy, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999, pp. 227-28.
Gunther, Scott E.: "France: Law", Reader's Guide to Gay and Lesbian Studies, ed. Timothy Murphy, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999, pp. 228-30.
Gunther, Scott E.: "Ghetto ou Village?" Le Nouvel Observateur, 28 February 2002, pp. 8, 9. Available online
Gunther, Scott E.: "Le Marais: The indifferent ghetto", Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, 6 (1) (Winter 1999): pp. 34, 36. Available online
Gunther, Scott E.: Review of The Pink and the Black by Frédéric Martel, Journal of Homosexuality, 42 (2) (2001-2002).
Hahn, Pierre (ed.): Nos ancêtres les pervers: la vie des homosesuels sous le second empire. Paris: Oliver Orban, 1971. (Anthology of texts 1852-70)
Hanna, Martha: "Natalism, homosexuality, and the controversy over [Andre Gide's] Corydon", in Merrick and Ragan, Homosexuality in Modern France (1996), pp. 202-24.
Herman, Gerald: "The sin against nature and its echoes in medieval French literature", Annuale Mediaevale, 17 (1976): 70-87.
Huas, Jeanine: L'homosexualite au temps de Proust. Dinard: Editions Danclau, 1992.
Lever, Maurice: Les buchers de Sodome: histoire des "infames". Paris: Fayard, 1985.
Merrick, Jeffrey: "The Marquis de Villette and Mademoiselle de Raucourt: representations of male and female sexual deviance in late eighteenth-century France", in Merrick and Ragan, Homosexuality in Modern France (1996), pp. 30-53.
Merrick, Jeffrey: "Sexual politics and public order in late eighteenth-century France: the Mémoires secrets and the Correspondance secrète", Journal of the History of Sexuality, 1(1) (1990), pp. 68-84.
Merrick, Jeffrey and Sibalis, Michael, eds: Homosexuality in French History and Culture. Haworth, 2001.
Merrick, Jeffrey and Ragan, Bryant T.: Homosexuality in Early Modern France: A Documentary Collection. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Merrick, Jeffrey and Ragan, Bryant T.: Homosexuality in Modern France: Studies in the History of Sexuality. Oxford University Press, 1996.
Nye, Robert A.: "Michel Foucault's sexuality and the history of homosexuality in France", in Merrick and Ragan, Homosexuality in Modern France (1996), pp. 225-41.
Peniston, William A.: "Love and death in gay Paris: homosexulity and criminality in the 1870s", in Merrick and Ragan, Homosexuality in Modern France (1996), pp. 128-145.
Peniston, William A.: Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris. Harrington Park Press, 2004.
Ragan, Bryant T., Jr.: "The Enlightenment confronts homosexuality", in Merrick and Ragan, Homosexuality in Modern France (1996), pp. 8-29.
Rey, Michel: "Parisian homosexuals create a lifestyle, 1700-1750: The police archives", Eighteenth-Century Life, 9 (1985), 179-91. Reprinted in Wayne R. Dynes and Stephen Donaldson (eds), History of Homosexuality in Europe and America, New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1992), pp. 273-85.
Rey, Michel: "Police and sodomy in eighteenth-century Paris: From sin to disorder", in Gerard and Hekma, The Pursuit of Sodomy (1989), 129-46.
Robb, Graham: Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century. Picador, 2003. Reviews in The Guardian; The Independent; Newsday; and New Statesman.
Rosario, Vernon A., II: "Pointy penises, fashion crimes, and hysterical mollies: the pederasts' inversions", in Merrick and Ragan, Homosexuality in Modern France (1996), pp. 146-76.
Sautman, Francesca Canadé: "Invisible women: lesbian working-class culture in France, 1880-1930", in Merrick and Ragan, Homosexuality in Modern France (1996), pp. 177-201.
Schehr, Lawrence R.: Alcibiades at the Door: Gay Discourses in French Literature. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995. Review.
Schehr, Lawrence R.: The Shock of Men: Homosexual Hermeneutics in French Writing. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995.
Seel, Pierre: I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror. New York: Basic Books, 1995.
Sibalis, Michael: "Homophobia, Vichy France and the ‘crime of homosexuality': The origins of the Ordinance of 6 August 1942", GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, 8 (3) (2002): 301-18.
Sibalis, Michael David: "The regulation of male homosexuality in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, 1789-1815", in Merrick and Ragan, Homosexuality in Modern France (1996), pp. 80-102.
Stockinger, Jacob: "Homosexuality and the French Enlightenment", in G. Stamboulian and E. Marks (eds), Homosexualitiy and French Literature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979, pp. 161-85.
Tamagne, Florence: A History of Homosexuality in Europe: Berlin, London, Paris, 1919-1939, 2 vols, New York: Algora, 2004.
Teaseley, D.: "The charge of sodomy as a political weapon in early modern France - the case of Henry III in Catholic League polemic, 1585-1589", Maryland Historian, 18(1) (1987), pp. 17-30.
Thompson, Victoria: "Creating boundaries: homosexuality and the changing social order in France, 1830-1870", in Merrick and Ragan, Homosexuality in Modern France (1996), pp. 102-127.
Weiss, Andrea: Paris was a Woman: Portraits from the Left Bank. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. (Lesbian literary subculture c. 1900)
Wolfgang, Aurora: "A passion between women: The case of Germaine de Staèl and Juliette Récamier", Women in French Studies, 7 (1999), pp. 66-78.

French History

See also: