Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928

by Martha Vicinus

Intimate Friends offers a fascinating look at the erotic friendships of educated English and American women over a 150-year period, culminating in the 1928 publication of The Well of Loneliness , Radclyffe Hall's scandalous novel of lesbian love. Martha Vicinus explores all-female communities, husband-wife couples, liaisons between younger and older women, female rakes, and mother-daughter affection. Women, she reveals, drew upon a rich religious vocabulary to describe elusive and complex erotic feelings.

Vicinus also considers the nineteenth-century roots of such contemporary issues as homosexual self-hatred, female masculinity, and sadomasochistic desire. Drawing upon diaries, letters, and other archival sources, she brings to life a variety of well known and historically less recognized women, ranging from the predatory Ann Lister, who documented her sexual activities in code; to Mary Benson, the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury; to the coterie of wealthy Anglo-American lesbians living in Paris.

In vivid and colorful prose, Intimate Friends offers a remarkable picture of women navigating the uncharted territory of same-sex desire.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Queer, LGBT, Lesbian, 19th Century, Victorian

344 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Martha Vicinus is an American scholar of English literature and Women's studies. She serves as the Eliza M. Mosher Distinguished University Professor of English, Women's Studies, and History at the University of Michigan.

Reviews

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

thorough bibliographic studies, not very dense but also just not very engaging writing. keeping marcus’ arguments that vicinus engages in the continuum and minority theses in mind (i read between women before this), i did notice how much vicinus projects modern homosexual vs heterosexual conflict backwards, which may be anachronistic/ahistorical.

[Ava · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic study of historical sapphics. I loved the way Vicinus broke this up into sections to demonstrate the shifting perceptions and societal roles/expectations while also illustrating them through extremely well-researched biographies.

[Doris Raines · Rating 4 out of 5]

I LIKE THIS BOOK.

[Abigail Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books on this subject that I've read. Highly recommend!

[Jacci · Rating 3 out of 5]

Where can I get my hands on Anne Lister’s diary?

[Drianne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not memorable.

[Rebecca]

I enjoyed this book overall because it gave great context about historical lesbians. However she sometimes made arguments and comments about overlapping figures without explaining chronology which I found hard to follow.