Same-sex desire in early modern England, 1550-1735: An anthology of literary texts and contexts is a collection of English texts dealing with same-sex erotic love, relationships, desires and sexual acts. Recent scholarship has explored extensively the nature and representation of early modern homoerotic relationships and sexual acts, but this anthology is the first devoted to their literary and non-literary representations in this crucial period when conceptions about sexuality and identity generally underwent massive change.

Carefully annotated, introduced, and contextualized with selections from texts in several early modern disciplines - such as theology, medicine, and the law - the anthology's literary works come from a wide variety of genres. There are extensive selections from works in translation, drama, romance, fiction, poetry, and essays, focusing on a balance between the period's well-known homoerotic works, such as Shakespeare's Sonnets, and those which have remained much more obscure, such as Catherine Trotter's heroic drama Agnes de Castro. The anthology includes an online companion, offering further primary texts, brief interpretive essays, and an up-to-date bibliography.

The selection of works from many different disciplines and genres makes Same-sex desire in early modern England, 1550-1735 ideal for use in undergraduate courses in the areas of English literature, history, and gender studies. It offers graduate students and academics provocative intersections between canonical and non-canonical literary texts, and the general reader a perhaps unexpectedly rich tradition of texts both celebrating as well as condemning same-sex erotic love.

Marie H. Loughlin's profile page

Marie H. Loughlin is Associate Professor in English Literature at the University of British Columbia (Okanagan).