Here at last is a single volume that reveals the bright thread of gay literature throughout the Western tradition. With hundreds of works by authors ranging from Ovid to James Baldwin, from Plato to Oscar Wilde, "The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature" presents a wide range of poetry, fiction, essays, and autobiography that depict love, friendship, intimacy, desire, and sex between men.

Since the Renaissance, countless writers have been magnetized by the notion of love between women. This anthology registers that fact in as encompassing and enlightening a way as possible. Castle explores the emergence and transformation of the "idea of lesbianism."

The first comprehensive history of homophobia-from ancient Athens to the halls of Congress-this bold, original work is certain to become a classic. It is the last acceptable prejudice. In an age when racial and ethnic name-calling are viewed with distaste, and physical epithets are frowned upon, hatred of homosexuals remains rife. Now, in a tour de force of historical and literary research, Byrne Fone chronicles the evolution of homophobia through the centuries. Delving into literary sources as diverse as Greek philosophy, the Bible, Elizabethan poetry, and the Victorian novel, as well as historical texts and propaganda from the French Revolution to the Moral Majority, Fone finds that same-sex desire has always been the object of legal, social, and religious persecution. Fone shows how the biblical story of Sodom became the primary source for later prohibitions against homosexuality. He charts the subtle shifts in public attitudes and law, from Anglo-Saxon edicts that imposed death by burning upon "confess'd sodomytes," to Victorian decrees that punished sodomy with "forfeiture of all rights, including procreation" (i.e., castration). Sifting the evidence of our own times, including Reader's Digest articles and TV talk-show transcripts, Fone demonstrates that homophobia remains one of the central tenets of law, science, faith, and literature, and defines the very essence of what it means to be male or female. Written by an acclaimed expert in gay and lesbian history, Homophobia is the best sort of history: lively, accessible, and enlightening.

The Columbia Anthology of British Poetry brings together the most remarkable verse written in the British Isles over the course of the past twelve centuries, offering the greatest diversity of poetic voices in any anthology of its kind. From Shakespeare's memorable sonnets to Keats's haunting odes to T.S. Eliot's mediations on the conditions of modern life, the collection contains many of the best-loved treasures of British poetry. Longer and much-celebrated poems that rarely find their way into anthologies-including Pope's "Rape of the Lock" and Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"-claim a place in this collection. Queen Elizabeth I, Anne Killigrew, Aphra Behn, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Felicia Hemans are among dozens of women writers renowned in their own day and now restored to their rightful prominence. Scottish, Welsh, and Irish poets often excluded from anthologies of British poetry are here as well, including such extraordinary voices as Lady Grisell Baillie, Robert Burns, Hugh MacDiarmid, and Seamus Heaney. The finest contemporary poets are fully represented also, from Thom Gunn to Eavan Boland. The result is an amazingly rich and wide-ranging conversation among British poets that transcends the boundaries of time and place. Carl Woodring and James Shapiro, the team scholars who edited The Columbia History of British Poetry, have written incisive introductions to the careers of the poets, making this the most accessible and comprehensive anthology of British verse in print. Covering the new and the ancient, the classic and the rediscovered, this generous volume reimagines the horizons of British poetry.

Integrating selections by gay and lesbian teenagers with older writers' reflections on growing up lesbian or gay, this anthology features works by James Baldwin and Quentin Crisp.

The members of the literary circle known as the Violet Quill--Andrew Holleran, Felice Picano, Edmund White, Christopher Cox, Michael Grumley, Robert Ferro, and George Whitmore--collectively represent the aspirations and the achievement of gay writing during and after the gay liberation movement. David Bergman's social history shows how the works of these authors reflected, advanced, and criticized the values, principles, and prejudices of the culture of gay liberation. In spinning many of the most important stories gay men told of themselves in the short period between the 1969 Stonewall Riots and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic during the 1980s, the Violet Quill exerted an enormous influence on gay culture. The death toll of the AIDS epidemic, including four of the Violet Quill's seven members, has made putting such recent events into a historical context all the more important and difficult. The work of the Violet Quill expresses the joy, suffering, grief, hope, activism, and caregiving of their generation. The Violet Hour meets the urgent need for a history of the men who bore witness not only to the birth but also to the decimation of a culture.

The Advocate is a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) monthly newsmagazine. Established in 1967, it is the oldest continuing LGBT publication in the United States.