(Jodie Medd) “Before analyzing how LBGT and gay identity and history are portrayed in current British fiction by renowned authors, this study looks at the sexuality history in which modern queer fiction in Britain first originated. Some of the historical circumstances include the impact of the world wars, nineteenth-century sexology, and legal discourse, twentieth-century gay liberation politics, and late twentieth-century queer politics and theory. Some of the themes and overarching issues include the coming-out story, the performativity of identity, hybrid identity, historical fiction and the use of the past, literary intertextuality, and postmodern experimentation. The LGBT themes and sexual histories depicted in the fiction are analyzed in relation to British literary traditions along with British national, social, political, and class dynamics. Contemporary British authors discussed include Jeanette Winterson, Hanif Kureishi, Alan Hollinghurst, Jamie O'Neill, Pat Barker, Sarah Waters, and Jackie Kay.”

(Teresa M. Pershing) This study argues that error can be a valuable lens for examining identity in both the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as well as the twenty-first century since the error is polysemous and flexible. The error makes it possible to conduct an analysis that considers both normativity's construction and challenges from the perspective of and alongside queer people. Part of the reason why error is useful as a critical lens is due to its diversity. It is both negative—something we attempt to avoid—and positive—something that usually leads to understanding, development, or introspection. Errors include both aimless wandering and intentionally identifying an error. The epilogue looks at a man's twenty-first-century autobiographical writing. The works from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century that have female protagonists are discussed in each chapter. The chapters on William Godwin's memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft, Amelia Alderson, and other women who challenge what Bourdieu refers to as "collectively misrecognized" understandings of identity as truth/error and "either/or" use both actual and fictional characters. Opie's Dangers of Coquetry, Something New by Anne Plumptre, Illustrations of Political Economy by Harriet Martineau, and a signed Labor by Thomas Beatie In order to demonstrate how identities, particularly gender identities, are errant—wandering, nonsystematic, and unsystematizable—I take up the category of mistake. I accomplish this by utilizing concepts of error developed by Seth Lerer and Zachary Sng. By doing this, I refute and expose the fallacy of the notion that identity is always systematic. I study British literature from the Romantic era, specifically from 1790 to 1840, in order to comprehend how sexual and gender identity categories formed over the course of the rest of the 19th century, a time period that molded modern concepts of sexuality and gender. Finally, the notion of errancy directly addresses the worries of academics like Carla Freccero, Viviane Namaste, and Steven Angelides who argue that the notion of "queer" has not yet advanced sufficiently in terms of its immateriality or in problematizing and resolving the fixity of identification.

(Guy Davidson) In the current understanding of sexuality, both inside and outside the academy, the apparent fixity (and staidness) of identifying categories like lesbian, gay, and straight are commonly contrasted with the alleged liability (and transgressive thrill) of queerness. Although other Anglophone cultures quickly embraced the term, queer was initially an American phenomenon. In the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were a number of parallel cultural and political shifts that served as catalysts for and indicators of its expansion. Queer people, who supported transgression, gender fluidity, and intersectionality, opposed the alleged assimilationism, gender conformism, and whiteness of the so-called mainstream gay and lesbian movement. This paper explores the complex link between the terms "queer" and the categories of lesbian and homosexual identity in literary studies after 1990. The essential gesture of queer theory is the rejection of identification, but due to its equally fundamental relationship to same-sexuality, it is constantly forced into conflict with the identity categories that have served as the primary framework for same-sexuality definition in the contemporary era. The emergence of the term "queer" as a critical idea and the numerous ways it has been used to conceptualize anti-identitarian and antinormative politics are briefly outlined in the opening paragraph. I then turn to recent literary analyses that have touched on sexual identity.

(Bornali Nath Dowerah) “The scope of young adult literature in India is very different from that of young adult literature from other countries. It is not immediately obvious that post-Raj authors like R. K. Narayan, Ruskin Bond, and Mulk Raj Anand are writing only for children, despite the fact that they have made some notable contributions. Nobody really focuses their reading in the context of India. LGBT people's representation in Indian English fiction has seen a significant transition over the past few decades, especially in the young adult literary genre. In this context, the LGBT community is called the "queer" community. Two novels “Slightly Burnt” (2014) by Payal Dhar and “Talking of Muskaan” (2014) by Himanjali Sankar have been selected for analyzing queer spaces as exemplary of contemporary young adult Indian English fiction. Extending through the methodology of queer theory this article interrogates the narrative voices that claim heterogeneity as normal against homosexuality. Moreover, an attempt has been made to study and bring out the element of ambivalence delineated in the authorial voice, queer representations, and the adolescent perspective.”

(Sanyal and Maiti) In India, debate and conversation about queerness, or more specifically, queer sexuality, has always been prevalent. For a very long time, Indian queer identity has struggled with the decision of being or not being. "Identities are complicated to begin with and become more problematic when tying them to nation and sexuality," as Dasgupta puts it. Indian sexual identities, according to Dasgupta (2011), are the result of "Mulipicitous consequences and perceptions of tradition, modernity, colonization, and globalization," which are more frequently at odds than cooperating. This is a result of the ethnic and cultural diversity found in India. This essay's main argument is to show the history of queerness in India through literary analysis of Rabindranath Tagore's The Editor (1893) and The Housewife (1891), Ismat Chugtai's Lihaaf (1941), and R. Raja Rao's The Boyfriend (2003), as well as how it manifested in daily life or how society perceived it. The study tries to fill in the gaps on when and how queerness disappeared before reemerging in front of a more sophisticated, perplexed, and likely more conservative audience by bridging ancient and modern India.

(Janelle M. Snyder) This qualitative content analysis study examines the representation of LGBTQ characters in ten 2019 young adult novels. Given the increased rate of self-harm and suicide among young people who identify as LGBTQ, it does so. Using the World Cat Online Database, 30 titles were found using the search parameters of the year of publication, LGBTQ, young adult, and fiction. The sample size was reduced by randomly choosing every third novel. The first coding list was used when reading and analyzing novels with the following considerations in mind: Age, social status, ethnicity or culture, sexual preference, physical attractiveness, the permanence of preference, strong or weak personality, and marital status. Lesbians were highly represented, but homosexual and bisexual men, non-binary people, and transgender people were underrepresented, according to the statistics. The findings also showed that female characters frequently had to cope with something else in addition to their sexual identity and/or orientation. Male, no binary, and transgendered characters frequently did not address issues outside of their gender identity and/or orientation. This study demonstrates that even while LGBTQ YA literature has made considerable progress, much more work remains. More works including male characters that identify as nonbinary, transgender, homosexual, or bisexual as well as aromantic, asexual, gender flexible, or otherwise queer are needed, especially for LGBTQ literature.

(Shalmalee Palekar) What exactly falls under the category of "new queer literature" in India? By focusing on works from the twenty-first century and paying close attention to two short tales from the 2012 collection Out!, this essay seeks to provide a response to that question. The anthology "New Queer India," compiled by Minal Hajratwala, contains the tales "A Cup Full of Jasmine Oil" by Sunny Singh and "Nimbooda, Nimbooda, Nimbooda" by Ashish Sawhny. This article examines the relationship between literary cultural output and actual, watershed events, although it is not meant to be a legal or historical study. “Through asking questions such as “What is ‘new’ about these twenty-first century works?” and “How are they ‘queer’?” I seek to map the politics of location in Singh’s and Sawhny’s texts. More generally, I consider contemporary queer Indian literature, particularly with regard to its focus on what I would term “visible-invisibility”—the contradictory, complex, time-and-place-specific discourses that construct queer Indian subjects across diverse religious, gender, and community contexts.”

(Aditi Chakraborty) After Deepa Mehta's Fire was released in 1998, a firestorm erupted in Indian cinemas. This movie used the concept of a lesbian partnership to highlight the unspoken reality of female sexuality in Indian households. The movie caused a nationwide uproar and was perceived as a weapon to pervert Indian sexual ideals. Queer literature was regarded as post-colonial and contributed to the emergence of a new sociopolitical diaspora. Along with sexuality, it also addresses taboos around patriarchy, gender roles, and power relations. The transgender person was also portrayed in the poem Dance of the Eunuchs by Kamala Das. Rabindranath Tagore's writings provided a unique framework for the concepts of effeminacy and misogyny. This type of diaspora was not completely inclusive even if it reflected the realities of interpersonal relationships and the power system. With their repressed sexuality, the voices of the subaltern are brought to light by queer studies. A fresh lady with intense sexual cravings and independence would be ideal. Under the cover of feminism, queer writing has been maintaining its own limitations in India. It has come out of its own closet with the development of activism, but the majority view does not grant it literary freedom or inclusivity. In this essay, I examine how the nation's persecuted sexual minority has been motivated by this literature, which has consistently been vociferous and prominent in doing so.

Hannah Gabrielle analyses how LGBTQ people, stories, and interpretations are able to be seen through the British Library's vast collection of materials.”

“Sexuality, a crucial component of human identity, has long been the subject of artistic expression and, some may even say, the primary motivation for most of what people do. In order to comprehend our collection from both a personal and societal perspective, it is imperative to start there.”

Discovering Literature, our most comprehensive online resource makes it abundantly evident that LGBTQ perspectives, themes, influences, and contributions are present across the whole body of literature. This is true whether one is studying gay clubs like The Colony Room Club in Soho, contextualizing sexuality by questioning Victorian beliefs on sex or thinking about how David Bowie envisioned a day when gender and sexuality would no longer be rigid categories but rather fluid ones.

“Sexuality can be used as a critical lens, as in this queer interpretation of William Shakespeare's gender farce Twelfth Night. We might also examine how Shakespeare's contemporaries Christopher Marlowe and Christopher Marlowe treated same-sex partnerships in Martin Wiggins' version of the play Edward II. The queer sketchbook by filmmaker, artist, and activist for gay rights Derek Jarman, a prologue to his 1991 film Edward II, examines a modern viewpoint on the subject.”

In addition to the literary works we employ, we also take into account how society perceives gender and sexuality. For instance, in our online exhibition Sisterhood, which relies on the long-standing partnerships between gay and lesbian liberation organizations, we analyze queer and trans feminism. The 1990s saw the rise of these movements. These programs have given women and men new ways to develop relationships after feeling excluded by traditional roles based on their sex. Additionally, Mary Kelly is shown here discussing how the feminist movement has been impacted by the transsexual rights movement.

“Cultural icons like Oscar Wilde and W. H. Auden gave voice to non-heteronormative identities at a period when homosexuality was illegal and, in Oscar Wilde's case, susceptible to prosecution. Oscar Wilde was important in helping comedian and television celebrity Stephen Fry comes to terms with his sexuality.”

Wilde's writings, such as De Profund, which he penned while serving a term for homosexuality, also shed light on his ideas about his sexual orientation.

The literary works of Oscar Wilde have been analyzed in light of the author's sexuality, with Roger Luck Hurst identifying veiled gay undertones in A Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest.

Our collections also include other progressive bohemians who questioned existing social sexual stereotypes. The best English lyric poet of the 20th century is thought to be W. H. Auden. In our article, Roz Kaveney highlights Auden's innovative and brave approach to his sexual identification. "Auden was not merely a homosexual during a time when doing so was against the law and was largely viewed as filthy in his native country; he was openly gay and at times evangelically so," reads the preface to WH Austen's Lullaby.

Although Auden's Lullaby is "not an out gay poetry," according to Kaveney, she agrees that it is "distinctly queer" because it blurs the lines between various sexual orientations.

More lately, the acceptability of Auden's sexual orientation has grown through to popular culture. In the 1994 movie Four Weddings and a Funeral, the gay man's partner reads Auden's poem Stop All the Clocks during the funeral. As a result, the poet's status as a gay icon for a new generation was revived.

Several of the entries in our Discovering Twentieth Century Literature hub have extra information about W. H. Auden.

A well-known novelist who has written about LGBT issues is E. M. Forster. In this article, Kate Symondson analyses his gay literature with a particular emphasis on the book Maurice.

In the latter part of the 20th century, as television and film matured as art forms, new venues for the investigation of LGBTQ experiences opened up. Their budding romance is depicted in Hanif Kureishi's 1985 Oscar-nominated film My Beautiful Laundrette, which is about a young British Asian man who owns a laundromat with his white schoolmate.

When discussing My Beautiful Laundrette, Kureishi said that he was interested in depicting new types of people outside of the gender roles and identities that the preceding generation had built. He made mentioned how identification and the language of others can both oppress a person.

These British cultural leaders have been a beacon of hope for everyone who has faced prejudice on account of their sexual orientation, and their writings have progressed society by promoting acceptance of LGBTQ experiences. (Hannah Gabrielle)