#this is the vita who signed letters as ‘your orlando’

[bnwthinking]

I want to get more into classic literature. Any recommendations? Your taste is awesome. (I'm mainly interested in romantic literature. Major bonus points if it's gay. But I'm up for any kind of classic literature.)

omg thanks for this question!! i love giving recs on this shit lol

ancient queer stuff

'collected works of sappho' is always good place to start, i would recommend anne carson's translation. it is not the most literal in translation but it is the best version in my opinion for understanding the gay emotions that sappho was trying to to convey.

on that note, i would also recommend reading enheduanna's 'poems for the goddess inanna'. think of her as sappho's elder, she was a sumerian poet and the first person we know to have ever created a collection of poems and signed her name to it. she was also very queer.

'the iliad' is also very very gay!! i dont have a favourite translation, my fave greek translator hasn't covered it yet but deffo check homer out.

classic (or modern classic) queer stuff

'orlando' by virginia woolf - a book about a man that wakes up as a woman one day and also immortal. the book is a bisexual in everyway love letter to vita sackville-west, the arguable love of virginia woolf's life. also would recommend reading 'mrs dalloway' or 'a room of one's own' by woolf and literally anything written by vita who was an established writer, too.

'giovanni's room' by james baldwin - this book was really important in my coming out process when i was a teenager. its about letting yourself be loved when you've been raised in shame. james baldwin's writing is a gift. check out his poetry if you're into poetry fs. i also really like baldwin's 'tell me how long the train's been gone'

'the well of loneliness' by radclyffe hall - not a personal fave of mine but definitely an important piece of lesbian literature.

'maurice' by e.m forster - forster hid this book from the world until his death. its about gay happiness and he knew if publishers got their hands on it they would make it about gay sadness. it was publish how forster wanted in the 1970's even though he wrote it in like 1917 or something lol

'the price of salt' by patricia highsmith - the novel that the movie carol is based off of

'the city and the pillar' by gore vidal

'better angel' by forman brown

the dark bisexual quartet that is : mary shelley's 'frankenstein', bram stoker's 'dracula', oscar wilde's 'the picture of dorian gray' and joseph le fanu's 'carmilla'

'rebecca' by daphne du maurier - i love 'rebecca' because it so bisexual and nasty but anything by daphne is a big rec from me!! she was openly bi and it's very evident in her work lol.

'the bell jar' by sylvia plath - the original manic pixie bisexual. i try to read 'the bell jar' once every couple of years.

'the charioteer' by mary renault - mary renault was one of the first people to write gay fiction in the uk in a positive light and her work was frequently banned!!

'Q.E.D' by gertrude stein

'yellow rose' by yoshiya nobuko - she wrote a lot of lesbian lit but 'yellow rose' is one of her only stories translated into english

'tales of a mask' by yukio mishima

'patience and sarah' by isabelle miller

'the color purple' by alice walker - gay but depressing as all fuck however literary wise, the writing is incredible. taught me a lot about voice and perspective.

'the great gatsby' by f. scott fitzgerald - easy to read, so damn short and the most subtext to ever subtext. fitz was a shit but whatever.

non specifically queer classic stuff

'tess of the d'urbervilles' or 'jude the obscure' by thomas hardy - hardy owned my arse when i was a teenager lol, i would consider these two of my fave books ever.

'wuthering heights' by emily bronte - divisive as always. its a book people either love or hate. its also a confusing read and i would recommend looking up a character map if you do attempt it. however, i'm one of the people that thinks 'wuthering heights' lives up the hype and the first time i read it it broke me.

'pride and prejudice' by jane austen - like wuthering heights but fun!

'the mill on the floss' by george eliot - 'silar marner' is good, too but i like mill better. i wrote my entrance essay for uni on it and my ma used to read it to me when i was little.

'metamorphosis' by franz kafka - anything by kafka is good tbh

'the second sex' by simone de beauvoir - important read that helped me understand a lot about early 20th century feminism, the good and the bad. the book i consider the foundation for a lot of what has come since.

'the lord of the rings' by jrr tolkien - idk if you're looking for fantasy (if you are let me know i'll make another list lol) but if you haven't read lotr, i promise it is better than you can ever imagine. tolkien also lives up to the hype.

lovecraft. start with the cthulhu mythos and branch out from there. 'the call of cthulhu' or 'the dunwich horror' or 'the nameless city' are good entry points imo.

okay that seems like a lot, i have more if you need lol. hope this helps in some way!

#book recs #reading recs

[umass-digiturgy]

Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962)

Vita Sackville-West (full name Victoria Mary Sackville-West) is the inspiration for the character Orlando in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, a Biography. She was a novelist and poet as well as an aristocrat, best known for her poem The Land (1926). 

Vita’s grandfather Lionel, 2nd Baron Sackville, fell in love with an Andalusian ballerina named Pepita and fathered five illegitimate children with her. Vita took after her mother, Victoria, in that she was a prolific artist at a young age (she started writing at age 12), and that when she entered society she had many admirers. Perhaps the first love of Vita’s life was her family’s estate at Knole, in Kent; it was perhaps the greatest tragedy of her life that the property left her family’s possession because Vita had not been born a man, and thus could not inherit it. 

Vita rejected the advances of many men at this stage in her life, choosing instead to strike up an affair with Rosamund Grosvenor, a childhood friend with whom she was smitten. The other significant romantic figure in Vita’s life at this point was Violet Trefusis, a childhood friend with whom Vita had a deep and almost obsessive relationship. Vita married Harold Nicolson in October 1913; Rosamund and Violet served as bridesmaids. Vita loved Harold, although their marriage is frequently characterized as “sexless” and lacking in passion. In particular, they shared a love for gardening, specifically the Sissinghurst Castle Garden (pictured right), which they created together, with Vita taking charge of the garden’s roses, of which she was incredibly fond. About their relationship, Vita wrote in a letter to Harold in 1960: “I think that is really the basis of our marriage, apart from our great love for each other, for we have never interfered with each other and, strangely enough, never even been jealous of each other.” Shortly after their marriage, they lived together in Constantinople, because Harold was serving at the British embassy there. 

In April 1918, Violet visited Vita at her home, and Vita began to experiment with dressing in men’s clothing. When Harold went away to write and sign the Treaty of Versailles, Vita and Violet went to Monte Carlo and Vita spent the entire trip dressed as a wounded war soldier named Julian, something explored further in Vita’s novel Challenge. When the women’s husbands flew to retrieve their wives, Vita, who had been prepared to leave her life behind to elope with Violet, grew furious with her when she revealed that she had had sex with her husband Denys before the trip, causing significant conflict and prompting the four to revert to “normal” life, with Violet returning home with Denys and Vita with Harold. 

When Vita met Virginia, she admired Virginia’s brilliance and Virginia in turn admired Vita’s sophistication. Vita worried for Virginia’s mental health, but they loved each other deeply, much to Violet Trefusis’ chagrin. 

In 1942, Harold wrote her a letter in which he spoke of her relationship with him and their children: “I remember your saying (years ago) that you had never established a complete relationship with anyone. I don’t think you ever could – since yours is a vertical and not a horizontal nature, and two-thirds of you will always be submerged. But you have established, with your sons and me, a relationship of absolute trust and complete love.” 

#Orlando