Historic Lesbian and Gay books, art and films for teens

Totally recommend 'Tales of the City' books they are a lovely introduction to the idea that people love people. They were serialised in a California newspaper so are v clean and subtle.

Also suggest My Policeman, recent film with Harry Styles. Intense but eyeopening.

What about Ballet Shoes? Yes, it's for younger readers. But the Doctors are so obviously in relationship. If your child enjoys Noel Streatfeild she might also want to read a biography of her, which would lead nicely to Well of Loneliness!

Film - Blue Jean. There is a bit of sex but not at all graphic or gratuitous. Main character is a lesbian teacher at the time of Thatcher's Section 28. Low key and really well acted. Not quite what you asked for as the film was released in the last few years but on a limited release and deserves a bigger audience.

Already mentioned but I remember Well Of Loneliness having a big impact on me as a teen and it's important for it's legal battles and social impact.

Desert Hearts! Made in the 80s but set in 1959 USA. A proper romance.

Oh, and Alison Bechdel's comic Dykes to Watch Out For. You can get it in collected form. Definitely a picture of a particular time and place.

Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden.

Seconding Emma Donoghue, 'specially her contemporary novels Hood - which is about grief following a closeted relationship - and Stir Fry, which is about university-aged women.

MetaFilter has had a few threads of refs for lesbian fiction, here, here and here. (Second link is queer literature generally.)

I've just watched this documentary about The Ladies of Llangollen from TG4, the Irish TV channel. It's mostly in Gaelic but you can switch on English subtitles if you need them. It's very gentle and romantic, no sex but a discussion towards the end about whether or not it matters if Sarah and Eleanor's relationship was sexual. There's also some nice footage of Plas Newydd which is still on my list of places to visit. I thought the whole thing was looking very positive in terms of not being captured but, at the end, people started talking about the usual alphabet soup and 'queering' the history. It sounds so ludicrous in the context of the Ladies' story so might be quite useful as a discussion point in itself.
https://www.tg4.ie/ga/player/seinn/?pid=6337016013112&title=Eleanor%20Butler%20&%20Sarah%20Ponsonby&series=Sc%C3%A9alta%20Gr%C3%A1%20na%20h%C3%89ireann&genre=Faisneis&pcode=645439

[I feel so offended by the word 'queer'. I just hate it. So much good and useful material is being contaminated by its use. I can't think of a better word than contaminated right now.]

Mary Renault's Alexander trilogy.

There is a complication with the second volume, in that the Persian Boy has been raped and trafficked before ending up in a humane relationship with Alexander. But the relationship between Alexander and Hephaestion (who is his husband in all but name) is beautiful and so resonant of the husband-husband relationships that have finally now become more or less accepted in our own society.

Even the relationship between Alexander and the Persian Boy is beautiful, because Renault so successfully idealises Alexander in her portrayal of him that it becomes possible to believe that the boy's history, and the imbalance of power between them, is co-existing with a genuinely consensual and loving partnership.

Also, they are just brilliantly exciting books.

My Beautiful Laundrette? It’s a 15 certificate.

Did you watch the TV series? there was an awful lot of striding around in shiny boots and wearing flash waistcoats, wasn't there?

Anne Lister's actual diaries were rediscovered as recently as the 1980s, it caused a huge stir at the time and there were even some suggestions that they were a hoax! I think some of the kerfuffle was because it was academically
fashionable at the time to say that 'gay' identity was a recent construct, and 'lesbian' identity didn't really exist at all in the past...

Tell that to Anne Lister, 1791-1840!

Philidelphia. I know that some people don't like the fact that Tom Hanks and Antonio Bandaras don't kiss, but I didn't think that their relationship was badly handled when I watched it. Their love is shown in other ways through the film and I definitely know that awful feeling when someone you love is ill/in hospital and Antonio acted that so well.

Spartacus. You will need the restored version of this, which of course brings up the talking point about why the bath scene (Laurence Olivier and Tony Curtis) was one of the removed scenes that was then later restored.

I've recently listened to the audio book of Malinda Lo's Last Night at the Telegraph Club (2021) about two young women (17ish) falling in love. It's set in San Francisco's Chinatown in the mid-1950s during McCarthyism. It puts female independence from men, Chinese culture, cross-dressing, butch-femme relationships - where they existed - into a lesbian (rather than TQ etc+) context and I thought the political back-drop and the 1950s setting, including the lesbian bar scenes were handled very well. I hadn't been expecting to enjoy it so much but it was sweet and fun, alongside the obviously much more serious social and political oppressive stuff.

For classics, The Charioteer by Mary Renault is very romantic from 1953. Maurice by EM Forster is rather more bitchy and cynical, and a bit earlier. Brideshead Revisited and A Room with a View both have gay characters, but a teenager might not notice.

My dd loved Gentleman Jack. She wears men's clothes but more for practical reasons. She isn't pretending to be a man.

I liked her expectation that she could do as she pleased like men at the time could. She wanted to travel, so she travelled. She wanted to go and vist someone so off she went.

A second vote for Rubyfruit Jungle, which is genuinely funny and very optimistic. Anything about Virginia Woolf's relationship with Vita Sackville-West.
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Books -

The Well Of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall. Very interesting for lesbian historical context, although profoundly depressing.

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown. A semi-autobiographical lesbian coming-of-age tale published in the early ‘70s. Some sexual content, nothing today’s teens would be phased by. Not depressing.

The Diaries of Anne Lister - another good one for historical context, also made into a dramatisation by the BBC (I think).

Films (not really my thing) - the one that came to mind first was Milk, about the life of Harvey Milk.

This is fiction but I believe it is based on a real couple:
Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller. Published around 1970, so predates a lot of the 'politics'*; I remember it as sweet and charming - and there's nothing wrong with that, right?😘

*yes yes I know the personal is political - but you know what I mean!

Anything [? I haven't actually read everything by her so that's not a 100% seal of approval] by Diana Souhami.
Here's a list from Wikipedia, a lot of them about lesbians:

• A woman's place : the changing picture of women in Britain. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. 1986. ISBN 9780140086096.
• Gluck, 1895-1978 : her biography. Hammersmith: Pandora. 1988. ISBN 978-0863582363.
• Gertrude and Alice. Hammersmith: Pandora. 1991. ISBN 9780044408338.
• Bakst : the Rothschild panels of the Sleeping beauty. London: Philip Wilson. 1992. ISBN 9780856674198.
• Greta and Cecil. London: Jonathan Cape. 1994. ISBN 9780297643647.
• Mrs Keppel and Her Daughter. London: Harper Collins. 1996. ISBN 9780002556453.
• The Trials of Radclyffe Hall. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 1998. ISBN 9780297818250.
• Selkirk's Island. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 2001. ISBN 9780297643852.
• Wild girls : Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 2004. ISBN 9780297643869.
• Coconut Chaos. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 2007. ISBN 9780297847878.
• Edith Cavell. London: Quercus. 2010. ISBN 9781849163613.
• Murder at Wrotham Hill. London: Quercus. 2012. ISBN 9780857382832.
• Gwendolen. London: Quercus. 2014. ISBN 9781782063520.
• No Modernism without Lesbians. London: Head of Zeus. 2020. ISBN 9781786694874.

I saw a really good one today when browsing a book shop but cannot remember the title- it's set in (I think) Victorian times and the two girls end up emigrating to Australia with their families. Maybe someone else will know what I'm talking about- I think it was written a while ago and is quite well known.

Historic movies that aren’t oversexualised:
Farewell my Concubine. Amazing epic Chinese story set over fifty years.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire -sex is minimal and historic drug taking but great one to discuss the nature of the female gaze v male gaze.
Carol - fifties based in Patricia Highsmith’s Price of Salt
Far from Heaven- worth double billing with Carol as also Todd Haynes movie based on Douglas Sirk’s technicolor melodramas
The Hours- worth watching along with Mrs Dalloway
Orlando-Sally Potter’s fantastic ride through gender bending gallop of Woolf’s novel.
The Favourite- also terrific because Emma Stone, Olivia Coleman and Rachel Weisz knocking themselves out to steal scenes from one another.
Reaching for the Moon - American poet Elizabeth Bishop meets her match in Brazilian poet/architect Mercedes de Acosta.

For learning to read subtext - Calamity Jane is quite a strong contender for lesbian context and can cause hours of debate.

Books - historical anything by Emma Donaghue. Under rated older writers sometimes forgotten, Mary Renault, Antonia White, Katherine Mansfield, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Ann Marie MacDonald
Poets- May Sarton, Charlotte Mew, Valentine Ackland, UA Fanthorpe

For historical context on lesbian culture cannot recommend highly enough Lilian Faderman’s Odd Girls & Twilight Lovers.

ETA when I realised I might not be straight back in the Dark Ages I went to our local library and many of the above writer stayed with me. I have a thing for historical movies so these are all favourites.

For just how grim it was to be gay in the past, I think The Killing of Sister George is a superb example as it does read in the closeted life, predatory older lesbian cliche and has a scene filmed in the Gateways club an actual real underground lesbian club in London.

I'd actually recommend reading the Quentin Crisp autobiographies, they're even funnier than the adaptation and give much more of an insight into what it was like to be a gay man when being one was still illegal. I'd add, for a corresponding insight into what life was like for lesbians in almost the same period, The Microcosm by Maureen Duffy (both 40s, 50s, 60s London). For U.S. novels of the same 40s to 70s vintage I'd include anything by James Baldwin, especially Go Tell It On The Mountain and Giovanni's Room (which of course also offer profound insights into black lives in Harlem/U.S. and the early civil rights and gay liberation movements). Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller (Alma Routsong) and The Price of Salt by Claire Morgan (Patricia Highsmith) - with a small side note about why both women felt impelled to name change! And speaking of killing two birds with one stone you could include Jeanette Winterson's The Passion for interesting sidelights on the Napoleonic Wars and Postmodernism/Magic Realism. Curious Wine by Katherine V. Forrest is an enchanting love story that manages a happy ending for its protagonists whilst delineating how they conduct their affair in a completely closeted fashion.

The film Victim starring Dirk Bogarde. It helped change the law on homosexuality.

Maybe not old enough to count as historic but
But I'm A Cheerleader (film).
Sugar Rush (TV series).

Edit: These are definitely for older teens not younger ones!

I found it very hard as a teen growing up in a heteronormative world where most of the stories, music and television featured main straight characters doing straight things like lusting after boys. I tended to stick to adventure stories and murder mysteries!