side note: if you want to read some killer late 19th century weird fiction by a queer writer: run, do not walk, to Vernon Lee's Hauntings. Lee's queerness falls right in that valley where modern identity categories fail due to the complexity of gendered experience, and it doesn't seem useful to retroactively pronounce One Definitive Label for her life and experience-- she used a male pseudonym and embraced gender-nonconformity by the standards of her era, both in physical presentation and in her career; she had powerful romantic relationships and long term collaborations with women; she had a complex relationship to physical intimacy; she lived a generally offbeat independent life as a scholar and international traveler -- but holy fuck her supernatural fiction is a first-class treat and has a lot of queer valences. Curious phenomena surround a charismatic orphan girl as Italy's pagan Classical past perseveres into its heavily Catholic present; a visiting academic becomes enthralled to a long-dead Renaissance femme fatale; a super-normie-looking married couple manifest troubling echoes of their ancestral forebears in the presence of the artist hired to paint their portrait; an uptight classical musician is tormented by a long-dead CASTRATO SEX GHOST who exerts preternatural force to seduce or to kill through the power of his otherworldly voice. It fucking rules. And you can read that shit for free. Please do.
Free kindle book and epub digitized and proofread by volunteers.
