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Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination

Additional information

By

Ruth Vanita

Publisher

Columbia Univ Press

Year Published

1996

Language

English

Description

This work looks at the legacy of love between women in the English canon, from romantic to postcolonial literature. It examines layers of homoeroticism in works by male and female authors and demonstrates the place of lesbian desire in the Western literary imagination.

ISBN 978-0231105514

Raised and educated in India, Ruth Vanita divides her time between Gurgaon and Missoula. Her first novel, Memory of Light, appeared from Penguin in 2020. Her next book of poems, A Hidden Player, will appear from Copper Coin in 2022. She taught at Delhi University for 20 years; for 13 years, she was active in the women’s movement and worked as co-editor of India’s first nationwide feminist magazine, Manushi, of which she was a founder. She is the author of many books on same-sex sexuality in Indian and British literature; her next book, The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics: Debates on Gender, Varna and Species, will appear from Oxford University Press in 2022.