Brigid Brophy, Lady Levey (June 12, 1929 – August 7, 1995)

Through the 1950s and 1960s, there was an unparalleled outpouring of representation and discussion about homosexuals. Mainstream publishing houses released hundreds of novels featuring homosexual characters and themes. These included respected, popular literary works such as Carson McCullers’s 1946 Member of the Wedding, Truman Capote’s 1958 Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and James Baldwin’s 1962 Another Country. Popular literature by James Barr, Patricia Highsmith, Jay Little, Brigid Brophy, Lance Horner, and Jane Rule sold to a mainstream audience or, like Barr’s Quatrefoil, a mostly gay male readership. Marguerite Yourcenar’s 1955 The Memoirs of Hadrian and Mary Renault’s books, such as the 1956 The Last of the Wine, set in a highly homoerotic ancient Greece, allowed homosexual readers to imaginatively construct a historical past. Lakey, a lesbian character modeled on woman-loving poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, was the most prescient and emotionally balanced central figure in Mary McCarthy’s 1962 best seller The Group. The 1950 thriller by lesbian writer Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train, which would become a film by Alfred Hitchcock a year later, explored issues of guilt and innocence (and the fine distinction between being an outcast and a criminal) through a homoerotic relationship that included blackmail and murder. --Bronski, Michael (2011-05-10). A Queer History of the United States (Revisioning American History) (Kindle Locations 3827-3839). Beacon Press. Kindle Edition.