Historical Dictionary of Lesbian Literature - Scarecrow Press

1793 Olympe de Gouges is executed in Paris.
CHRONOLOGY • xix
1796 Denis Diderot’s La Religieuse (The Nun) first published.
1797 Mary Wollstonecraft dies of complications after the birth of her
daughter, the novelist Mary Godwin (later Shelley).
c. 1800 Birth of the Chinese poet WuTsao whose tremendously popular
work often celebrates her love for various female courtesans.
1847 Charlotte Brontë publishes Jane Eyre. Some call the novel seditious.
It describes a woman’s sexual desire in forceful and active language.
1848 First women’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New
York. The “Declaration of Sentiments” (a feminist manifesto) is signed
there by many noted abolitionists and feminists.
1851 The abolitionist and feminist Sojourner Truth delivers her famous
“Ain’t I a Woman” speech at an antislavery convention in Acron,
Ohio. The speech deconstructs culturally accepted norms of femininity.
1862 Christina Rossetti publishes the poem “Goblin Market,” an allegory
that depicts the salvation of a “fallen” woman through a sensuous
lesbian encounter. The poem is not read as lesbian until the 20th century.
1870 Adolphe Belot publishes Mademoiselle Giraud, ma femme, the
first novel about female same-sex desire in which the influence of sexology
can be clearly traced.
1880 Emile Zola publishes the novel Nana. This contains the first depiction
of a modern, recognizably lesbian subculture.
1886 Henry James publishes his novel The Bostonians, which depicts
the struggle between a young man and an older feminist for the affections
of a young girl.
1895 Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer publish Studies on Hysteria in
Germany.
1897 Magnus Hirschfeld founds the Scientific Humanitarian Committee.
The Committee eventually publishes 23 volumes of the journal
Yearbook for Sexual Science. Havelock Ellis begins publication of Studies