Talk:List of gay novels prior to the Stonewall riots

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Novels

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List criteria

My intended criteria for inclusion here is any work that is basically any (pre-Stonewall) work that has been referred to in RS as a "gay novel" (though maybe not in those exact words). Further details about what sources count as reliable for these purposes may need to be hammered out later. A novel does not need to have an article to be included, but if it doesn't, it should be cited to non-trivial coverage in a secondary source.

I bootstrapped this list from Category:Novels with gay themes. I manually reviewed each entry and removed some that, based on their article, didn't support a prima facie case for being a "gay novel":

More may still need to be trimmed (and certainly there are many more that need to be added!). Also, FWIW, the columns other than "Notes" were mostly automatically populated from Wikidata. (You can even check out the Python code I used here). This is why there are a couple slightly strange values in the "Country" column like "Russian Empire". Colin M (talk) 15:33, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Other columns? Summary? Genre?

I was thinking it could be good to have at least a one-sentence summary for each novel (making sure to include the nature of the homosexual content in particular). I toyed with having a "Summary" column separate from the current "Notes" column, but decided it was probably overkill.

I also considered a "genre" column, but figured it would probably be a pretty weak source of signal, since most of the entries here are just "straight fiction" (if you'll pardon the pun). The main exceptions are some historical novels and pornographic novels. Could also include a "pulp fiction" label for some entries, but that's a very fuzzy designation, seeing as a lot of serious-minded gay fiction from the early 20th century was later reprinted in a pulp guise circa 1950s.

Would be curious to hear any thoughts about whether these or any other additional columns would be useful. Colin M (talk) 15:39, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]