Historical gay romance novels

It’s Pride month, which means I get to unapologetically talk up queer booksall month (as if I don’t do that 12 months of the year). For me, Pride has always been about honoring the past as much as celebrating the show . So it’s no surprise that Pride has got me thinking about gay historical fiction. There’s definitely not enough queer historical fiction in the nature. You might think, given the general lack of queer characters in historical fiction, that queer people sprang into existence sometime in the late 1960s. Obviously, this is not the case. And while we desperately need more historical fiction staring lgbtq+ people, there are, happily, some wonderful books out there that center gender non-conforming stories from centuries past. Not all of these books have happy endings, although many of them do. The queer characters in them have occupied, complicated, sometimes joyful, sometimes heartbreaking lives. In short: they are human. Yes, there is queer suffering in many of these books, but there is also queer resilience and joy. These books are a testament to the fact that queer people have been here all along. We might not ever know their factual names and stories, but we do