Queer Correspondence: Literary Love Letters and Lyrics

Celebrating queer love in all its forms, this moving collection champions the richly passionate love letters, poetry, and journals of history's queer writers.

Much of the love between queer people endures in their letters and writings because it had to be kept discreet and private for so long. A compelling testament to the resilience of forbidden relationships, Queer Correspondence spans centuries and continents to showcase the hearts and minds of some of history's most celebrated writers.

From the lyrical verse of Sappho and the poignant musings of Emily Dickinson to the fiery expressions of Oscar Wilde and Lord Byron, this carefully curated collection evidences the all-encompassing and defiant power of love in the face of adversity. The works of writers such as Herman Melville, Gertrude Stein, and A. E. Housman, are also featured, as well as revelatory letters from King James VI and I.

Aiming to capture the diverse array of queer love stories throughout history, this volume of intimate, heartfelt writings immortalises the work of queer writers whose words continue to resonate and inspire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read & Co. Books
• Release date: May 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9781528799287

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An Introductory Note

This volume champions the passion, depth, and everlasting spirit of love between queer writers. Collecting the correspondence of some of the most prolific and celebrated names in the literary sphere, this book pieces together letters, poetry, and journal entries that shed light on relationships that were hidden and quieted for so long. Encompassing writings from 600 BCE until the mid-twentieth century, this is a book of intense love, heartbreak, and devotion.

From Sappho to Oscar Wilde, this collection of writings encapsulates love in all its forms—whole, separated, unrequited, even after death—featuring works that hold a poignant beauty scarcely found outside intimate exchanges. So much of the love between queer people exists in their words because it had to be kept hushed and discreet. Perhaps that’s what makes it so compelling.

It’s not just the words of adoration and devotion that strike a chord in these writings but also the accounts of everyday happenings and seemingly mundane thoughts. As Herman Melville wrote in an intimate letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1851, ‘I should write a thousand—a million—billion thoughts, all under the form of a letter to you.’ Almost a century later in 1927, Virginia Woolf echoes the sentiment in a note to her lover Vita Sackville-West, ‘I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads’. To freely share the intricacies of our life with those we love is a privilege taken for granted, yet it’s one so many have been denied.

While we have focused on a small selection of writers in this volume, there are many more beautiful collections of love letters between queer people that have been published in more recent years. We have listed a selection of these titles under ‘Further Reading’ at the end of the volume.

Lizzie Stoddart

Bristol, 2024

Sappho

Often hailed as one of the greatest lyrical poets, Sappho (c. 630–570 BCE) was an Ancient Greek writer from the island of Lesbos. Renowned for her exquisite verse and emotional depth, her poetic legacy transcends millennia, despite the fragmentary nature of her surviving works. She’s believed to have composed over 10,000 lines of poetry, which have been preserved through meticulous transcription and translation across many languages and centuries.

While Sappho’s oeuvre encompasses a wide range of themes, it’s her evocative love poetry exploring relationships between women that has captivated readers throughout the ages. Paying homage to Sappho’s enduring influence and relevance in discourse on gender and sexuality, the word ‘lesbian’ is derived from the name of her birthplace. Likewise, the adjective ‘Sapphic’ is an inclusive term used as a descriptor for sexual and romantic attraction between queer women, transgender women, and nonbinary individuals.

‘Sappho who broke off a fragment of her soul for us to guess at.’

—Bliss Carmen,

Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics, 1904

‘Such was her unique renown that she was called The Poetess, just as Homer was The Poet. Plato numbers her among the Wise. Plutarch speaks of the grace of her poems acting on her listeners like an enchantment.’

—Henry Thornton Wharton,

Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings and a Literal Translation, 1920

‘Men call her the greatest lyric poet that the world has known, basing their judgment on the few perfect fragments that remain of her song. But her voice is more than the voice of a lyric poet, it is the voice of a world that has been, of a freshness and beauty that will never be again, and to give that voice a last touch of charm remains the fact that it comes to us as an echo . . . The mind of Sappho runs through all literature like a spangled thread.’

—Henry de Vere Stacpoole,

Sappho: A New Rendering, 1918

The Captive

Now Love has bound me, trembling, hands and feet,

O Love so fatal, Love so bitter-sweet.

—Sappho, translated by

Henry de Vere Stacpoole

, 1818

The First Kiss

And down I set the cushion

Upon the couch that she,

Relaxed supine upon it,

Might give her lips to me.

As some enamoured priestess

At Aphrodite’s shrine,

Entranced I bent above her

With sense of the divine.

She had, by nature nubile,

In years a child, no hint

Of any secret knowledge

Of passion’s least intent.

Her mouth for immolation

Was ripe, and mine the art;

And one long kiss of passion

Deflowered her virgin heart.

—Sappho, translated by

John Myers O’Hara

, 1910

Thy Form Is Lovely

Thy form is lovely and thine eyes are honeyed,

O’er thy face the pale

Clear light of love lies like a veil.

Bidding thee rise,

With outstretched hands,

Before thee Aphrodite stands.

—Sappho, translated by

Henry de Vere Stacpoole

, 1818

Ode to Anactoria

Peer of Gods to me is the man thy presence

Crowns with joy; who hears, as he sits beside thee,

Accents sweet of thy lips the silence breaking,

With