Representing the lesbian past through fiction

Lesbian historical fiction has played a crucial role as a means for writers to explore gender and sexuality across time and as a way of circumventing censorship when lesbianism was otherwise ‘unspeakable’. Despite differences in form and setting, it is united by an underlying epistemological principle – to make visible and embodied the hidden past of female same-sex love and desire. Looking at the work of writers such as Sylvia Townsend Warner, Emma Donoghue, Nalo Hopkinson, Sarah Waters and Chinelo Okparanta, I consider the issues involved in creating lesbian historical fiction given the significant gaps in the historical record, which overwhelmingly reflects the lives, actions and opinions of men. What freedoms, challenges and ethics are involved in narrating across absences and silences? What patterns and themes does lesbian historical fiction display? What is the relationship of such fiction to the actual past?