Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature

Description

Love between women crops up throughout literature: from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Charlotte Bronte, Dickens, Agatha Christie, and many more. In Inseparable Emma Donoghue examines how desire between women in literature has been portrayed, from schoolgirls and vampires to runaway wives, from cross-dressing knights to contemporary murder stories. Donoghue looks at the work of those writers who have addressed the `unspeakable subject', examining whether such desire between women is freakish or omnipresent, holy or evil, heart-warming or ridiculous as she excavates a long-obscured tradition of female friendship, one that is surprisingly central to our cultural history. A revelation of a centuries-old literary tradition - brilliant, amusing, and until now, deliberately overlooked.

Born in 1969, Emma Donoghue is an Irish writer who spent eight years in England before moving to Canada. Her fiction includes Slammerkin, Life Mask, Touchy Subjects, The Sealed Letter and the internationally bestselling Room (shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange prizes). In addition to Inseparable, her non-fiction includes Passions Between Women and We are Michael Field.