Unveiling the Secret (Smutty) Queer Stories of Centuries Past

Over a hundred years later, the shade drawn over classic gay literature is finally being lifted so the work can get the spotlight it's always deserved.

BY  Matt Baume

July 20 2015 3:15 PM ET 

Zan Christensen

For as long as there has been sex, men have been having it with men. Homosexuality is nothing new, after all. So why does it seem like gay men have been completely invisible in entertainment until relatively recently? Well, probably because for hundreds of years, we were considered forbidden and taboo, too dangerous to discuss or even acknowledge. We were there all along, but the culture rendered us invisible.

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But as it turns out, if you know where to look, you can find queer love all over classic literature.
Zan Christensen is my guest this week on The Sewers of Paris, a podcast about the entertainment that changed the lives of gay men. He's the founder of the LGBT-focused comic book publisher Northwest Press, and the first book he ever published was a graphic novel adaptation of a same-sex love story written in the 1800s. Teleny and Camille is rumored to have been written by Oscar Wilde, though the author's (or authors') identity will never truly be known, since secrecy was woven into queer identity in repressed Victorian England.
Back then, gay men were forced to hide. But in the somewhat repressed environment in which Zan grew up, hiding his homosexuality wasn't an option for long.