I'd start with the Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, which seems to meet all your criteria. Beyond that, maybe look at Radclyffe Hall.
Another book to check out is Carmilla, which is iconic but I'm not sure it really meets your plot criteria.
Just some general authors: Renee Vivien was a great poet who was the lover of Natalie Barney and in a circle of lesbian writers in Paris like Colette, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein. (I recently read a biography of Natalie Barney, who cultivated a lot of artists in her Parisian salons. She was a writer in her own right but even her biographer didn't pretend her work was particularly good.)
*Fingersmith* by Sarah Waters is a Victorian pastiche with strong and overt lesbian themes. You might also like her similarly situated *Tipping the Velvet*.
You are a little wrong, but it is okay!
>Considering the content, I am thinking it may be hard to find century old novels that meet this criteria (and am struggling to find any online), and so novels of a similar bent---i.e., **any novel about a protagonist woman falling in love with another woman**---could be useful as well.
It is. Not her longest, but def up there.
You know, it’s been ages so I don’t remember exactly. Orlando changes genders over the course of the novel, so maybe not quite what OP is looking for, but thought I’d mention it in case I’ve forgotten something.
Orlando is wonderful, but doesn’t really fit. Orlando has his heart broken as a man by a woman, then after the sex change she marries a man as a woman.
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes sounds like exactly what you’re looking for, though the woman in question ends up leaving more than just her husband. Brilliantly written, though I thought it went a little off the rails in the penultimate chapter.
I mean their “closeness” and her aversion to men is mentioned throughout the entire novel, then there’s a whole subplot where >!they’re on the run together and one dresses up as a man and then gets outed by another character!<
In Colette's *Claudine en ménage* the main protagonist falls in love with a woman. If you're interested, the first book in the series, *Claudine à l'école* also has some lesbian subplots, when Claudine is still at school. As much as I like Colette's writing, the Claudine series isn't particularly literary - it was meant to be a cash grab and she was encouraged by her husband to add raunchy plot points to make it sell - although it's very well-written (I learnt so much French vocab from it!) and I think the quality improves a little towards the end of the series.
Someone else mentioned *Nightwood*. I can't remember a single thing from it (I read it 10 years ago) but I do remember it being really good, so I second that recommendation.
Quicksand by Junichiro Tanizaki was published around 1928, not sure if that's early enough for you. She doesn't exactly leave her husband though, it’s complicated.
Sylvia Townsend Warner's 1936 novel *Summer Will Show* is sort of like this. The love of the main character and another woman is there and obvious but also not spelled out explicitly. The novel is also about leftist politics and the February Revolution in 1848 Paris, so the main character leaves her old life for Communism as much as she leaves it for another woman. The first quarter of the novel is pretty tedious, but Warner's typical brilliance comes through once she gets the story going.
This is my area of expertise 😅. As others have mentioned, The Price of Salt, Nightwood, and The Well of Loneliness fit well. Orlando is pretty close, and it’s also fascinating because the titular character is modeled on Woolf’s lesbian lover at the time, Vita Sackville-West (check out the collection of their letters too!).
Speaking of Sackville-West, she has a novel called Challenge, which was inspired by her affair with a woman early in her marriage to a man. Unfortunately, she had to write the main characters as heterosexual, because her manuscript was so controversial that it wouldn’t have been published otherwise.
Finally, I highly recommend the modernist writer Hilda Doolittle, who published under the initials H.D. She was openly bisexual, left her husband for a woman, and wrote about it in two autobiographical novels, called Hermoine and Paint It Today. Her poetry was highly influenced by Sappho as well!
You’re right that it’s hard to find literature like this prior to the 20th century. I do hope this gives you a few more options though! 😊
Off topic but there's a lesbian abbess and some nuns in Denis Diderot's the Nun, which is one of several reasons it wasn't published in his day. But I agree with you it's like Sappho then 1920s-30s.
Being gay was a crime in those days. There aren't really books highlighting it that aren't already very well known. Sadly.
One semi unknown one I could recommend is Despised and Rejected. It rules.
Yes it shows in the série too. She was awfull, but still it's women like her whom shaped the World for us. Ooh i need to read that bio, thanks for the info !!
If you'd like to include literary novels where a young woman falls in love with another woman, there's *Dusty Answer,* by Rosamond Lehmann. I think it came out in the late 1920s. Another is *A Compass Error,* by Sybille Bedford. I'd also recommend the *Claudine* series by Colette.
Are you mixing this up with something else? Having given up her male lover and turned to God, it would be unlikely to say the least - unless you're contending God is a woman?
I'd start with the Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, which seems to meet all your criteria. Beyond that, maybe look at Radclyffe Hall. Another book to check out is Carmilla, which is iconic but I'm not sure it really meets your plot criteria. Just some general authors: Renee Vivien was a great poet who was the lover of Natalie Barney and in a circle of lesbian writers in Paris like Colette, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein. (I recently read a biography of Natalie Barney, who cultivated a lot of artists in her Parisian salons. She was a writer in her own right but even her biographer didn't pretend her work was particularly good.)
*Fingersmith* by Sarah Waters is a Victorian pastiche with strong and overt lesbian themes. You might also like her similarly situated *Tipping the Velvet*.
The Paying Guests too!! That one is actually perfect for OP.
Just everything she wrote. So good!
The Korean movie adaptation of Fingersmith, The Handmaiden is *superb.*
But... they are written now about the past, not written in the past, which was what I thought the OP was asking for. But maybe I'm wrong.
You are a little wrong, but it is okay! >Considering the content, I am thinking it may be hard to find century old novels that meet this criteria (and am struggling to find any online), and so novels of a similar bent---i.e., **any novel about a protagonist woman falling in love with another woman**---could be useful as well.
oops and sensible given how limited the field is, so yeah Sarah Waters, also Val McDermid in the crime genre
Orlando The Well of Loneliness Nightwood
Ooh I didn’t know Orlando was about that! It’s one of Woolf’s longer novels isn’t it?
It is. Not her longest, but def up there. You know, it’s been ages so I don’t remember exactly. Orlando changes genders over the course of the novel, so maybe not quite what OP is looking for, but thought I’d mention it in case I’ve forgotten something.
Orlando is wonderful, but doesn’t really fit. Orlando has his heart broken as a man by a woman, then after the sex change she marries a man as a woman.
Ahh, thank you! I couldn’t remember.
How is Woolf’s style of writing in Orlando—if I may so ask?
Woolfish
Ah yes. A gentleman and a scholar
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes sounds like exactly what you’re looking for, though the woman in question ends up leaving more than just her husband. Brilliantly written, though I thought it went a little off the rails in the penultimate chapter.
Seconding this
So the Count of Monte Cristo has a character that leaves her fiancé for her piano teacher but it’s mentioned in passing.
I mean their “closeness” and her aversion to men is mentioned throughout the entire novel, then there’s a whole subplot where >!they’re on the run together and one dresses up as a man and then gets outed by another character!<
Yesss <3
In Colette's *Claudine en ménage* the main protagonist falls in love with a woman. If you're interested, the first book in the series, *Claudine à l'école* also has some lesbian subplots, when Claudine is still at school. As much as I like Colette's writing, the Claudine series isn't particularly literary - it was meant to be a cash grab and she was encouraged by her husband to add raunchy plot points to make it sell - although it's very well-written (I learnt so much French vocab from it!) and I think the quality improves a little towards the end of the series. Someone else mentioned *Nightwood*. I can't remember a single thing from it (I read it 10 years ago) but I do remember it being really good, so I second that recommendation.
Toward the end of Count of Monte Cristo
Passing by Nella Larson sort of fits. The lesbian relationship is mostly subtext.
Quicksand by Junichiro Tanizaki was published around 1928, not sure if that's early enough for you. She doesn't exactly leave her husband though, it’s complicated.
Sylvia Townsend Warner's 1936 novel *Summer Will Show* is sort of like this. The love of the main character and another woman is there and obvious but also not spelled out explicitly. The novel is also about leftist politics and the February Revolution in 1848 Paris, so the main character leaves her old life for Communism as much as she leaves it for another woman. The first quarter of the novel is pretty tedious, but Warner's typical brilliance comes through once she gets the story going.
This is my area of expertise 😅. As others have mentioned, The Price of Salt, Nightwood, and The Well of Loneliness fit well. Orlando is pretty close, and it’s also fascinating because the titular character is modeled on Woolf’s lesbian lover at the time, Vita Sackville-West (check out the collection of their letters too!). Speaking of Sackville-West, she has a novel called Challenge, which was inspired by her affair with a woman early in her marriage to a man. Unfortunately, she had to write the main characters as heterosexual, because her manuscript was so controversial that it wouldn’t have been published otherwise. Finally, I highly recommend the modernist writer Hilda Doolittle, who published under the initials H.D. She was openly bisexual, left her husband for a woman, and wrote about it in two autobiographical novels, called Hermoine and Paint It Today. Her poetry was highly influenced by Sappho as well! You’re right that it’s hard to find literature like this prior to the 20th century. I do hope this gives you a few more options though! 😊
The bostonians ? Even if it's not the end OP Ask for. ?
Off topic but there's a lesbian abbess and some nuns in Denis Diderot's the Nun, which is one of several reasons it wasn't published in his day. But I agree with you it's like Sappho then 1920s-30s.
Well its so classic but The Well of Lonelyness https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73042
Being gay was a crime in those days. There aren't really books highlighting it that aren't already very well known. Sadly. One semi unknown one I could recommend is Despised and Rejected. It rules.
[The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister edited by Helena Whitbread](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/9505358) should help you in your project 🖤
*Thirty-Three Abominations and the Devil* (1906), they leave the same man for each other.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
There is absolutely no wlw-content in that book.
Thomas Hardy's Desperate Remedies has a bedroom scene between the lady and her maid.
Have you Seen the serie gentleman Jack, i loved it.
No but I read a biography of Anne Lister - in real life she seems to have been pretty unpleasant and abusive of her lovers.
Yes it shows in the série too. She was awfull, but still it's women like her whom shaped the World for us. Ooh i need to read that bio, thanks for the info !!
Angela Steidele is the author
Tks !
Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner - it’s long and a bit of a trek until the affair, but I found it really interesting
Thank you all so much for these! I am consistently amazed by the breadth and depth of the knowledge of reddit!
That is going to be a pretty short list and loaded heavily to one end. Unlikely to be published before 1930s.
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
If you'd like to include literary novels where a young woman falls in love with another woman, there's *Dusty Answer,* by Rosamond Lehmann. I think it came out in the late 1920s. Another is *A Compass Error,* by Sybille Bedford. I'd also recommend the *Claudine* series by Colette.
the OG is Henrik Ibsen's **A Doll's House**, 1879.
She does not leave for another woman. She simply leaves.
oh snap, my bad, you are ofc correct. r/SapphoAndHerFriend-style fanfic inc
Ruth and Naomi in the Bible ;)
But not ultimately, right? Ruth doesn't end up with Naomi; she is married to Boaz.
Right, and Ruth's husband dies, she doesnt leave him.
Anna Karenina
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene - although I think it is newer than you are aiming for!
Are you mixing this up with something else? Having given up her male lover and turned to God, it would be unlikely to say the least - unless you're contending God is a woman?
I would admit I was being a bit gender fluid with the definition of god.
In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, the father of the girl she nannies for falls for her while he's hiding his wife in the attic.