Queer Classics

Explore classics in LGBTQ literature, selected by RCL editors. Resources for College Libraries (RCL) features core titles for academic libraries, curated by Choice/ACRL subject specialists. In Syndetics Unbound, RCL Librarians recommend a selection of the 90,000+ titles available at rclweb.net.

Updated July 1, 2024
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Before night falls
Arenas, Reinaldo
Paper Book
"Any attempt to reckon with Cuba's torturous twentieth century will have to take into account Arenas's monumental work ... an essential human testimony, joyful and enraged, a triumph of conscience." -- Garth Greenwell The acclaimed memoir of queer Cuban author...
The price of salt
Highsmith, Patricia
Paper Book
"A great American writer...Highsmith's writing is wicked...it puts a spell on you." --Entertainment Weekly Patricia Highsmith's story of romantic obsession may be one of the most important, but still largely unrecognized, novels of the twentieth century. First published in...
Sister outsider : essays and speeches
Lorde, Audre.
Paper Book
Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. "[Lorde's] works will be important to those truly interested in growing up sensitive,...
The city and the pillar : a novel
Vidal, Gore
Paper Book
A literary cause célèbre when first published in 1948, Gore Vidal's now-classic The City and the Pillar stands as a landmark novel of the gay experience. Jim, a handsome, all-American athlete, has always been shy around girls. But when he and his best friend, Bob,...
Fun home : a family tragicomic
Bechdel, Alison
Paper Book
CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED, NATIONAL BESTSELLER  Time Magazine #1 Book of the Year * National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist *  Winner of the Stonewall Book Award *  Double finalist for the Lambda Book Award * ...
Nightwood
Barnes, Djuna.
Paper Book
Nightwood, Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, "belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch" (Times Literary Supplement). That time is the period between the two World Wars, and Barnes' novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities,...
A single man
Isherwood, Christopher
Paper Book
When Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man first appeared, it shocked many with its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in maturity. Isherwood's favorite of his own novels, it now stands as a classic lyric meditation on life as an outsider. Welcome to...
Oranges are not the only fruit
Winterson, Jeanette
Paper Book
Winner of the Whitbread Prize for best first fiction, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a coming-out novel from Winterson, the acclaimed author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. The narrator, Jeanette, cuts her teeth on the knowledge that she is one of God's elect, but...
Queer
Burroughs, William S.
Paper Book
The definitive 25th-anniversay edition of Burroughs's legendary second novel. Originally written in 1952 but not published till 1985, Queer is an enigma-both an unflinching autobiographical self-portrait and a coruscatingly political novel, Burroughs' only realist love...
The well of loneliness
Hall, Radclyffe.
Paper Book
The Well of Lonelinesstells the story of tomboyish Stephen, who hunts, wears trousers and cuts her hair short - and who gradually comes to realise that she is attracted to women. Charting her romantic and professional adventures during the First World War and beyond, the novel provoked a...
Early novels and stories
Baldwin, James
Paper Book
Here, in a Library of America volume edited by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, is the fiction that established James Baldwin's reputation as a writer who fused unblinking realism and rare verbal eloquence. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain(1953), tells the story, rooted in Baldwin's...
Tales of the city
Maupin, Armistead.
Paper Book
The first novel in the beloved Tales of the City series, Armistead Maupin's bestselling San Francisco saga, and inspiration for the Netflix original series, Tales of the City "A consummate entertainer who has made a generation laugh. . . . It is Maupin's Dickensian gift to be able to...

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