Gay History of Britain

Matt Cook (lead author and editor) is lecturer in history at Birkbeck College, and author of London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885 - 1914 (2003).Robert Mills is a lecturer in English at King's College London, and author of Suspended Animation: Pain, Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture (2005).Randolph Trumbach is professor of history at Baruch College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York and author of The Rise of the Egalitarian Family (1978) and Sex and the Gender Revolution, vol. 1: Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London (1998).H. G. Cocks is lecturer in history at Birkbeck College, University of London, and author of Nameless Offences: Homosexual Desire in the Nineteenth Century (2003).

• Acknowledgements Introduction Matt CookChapter 1Male–Male Love and Sex in the Middle Ages, 1000–1500 Robert MillsChapter 2Renaissance Sodomy, 1500–1700 Randolph TrumbachChapter 3Modern Sodomy: The Origins of Homosexuality, 1700–1800 Randolph TrumbachChapter 4Secrets, Crimes and Diseases, 1800–1914 H. G. CocksChapter 5Queer Conflicts: Love, Sex and War, 1914–1967 Matt CookChapter 6From Gay Reform to Gaydar, 1967–2006 Matt CookIllustrations Further Reading Notes Author Biographies Index

The authors are professors of history and English at Birbeck and Kings Colleges in London and Baruch College in New York. In chapters focusing on six British eras from the Middle Ages to the present, they examine through literature and other primary documents how intimate emotional and/or sexual relationships between men were understood and defined by those involved and their societies. Among other things, they demonstrate that it was not until the 1700s that the notion of a gay identifying minority of men existed and separated them from the rest. The final chapter catalogs gay reform in Britain and its modern legacy.