In 1978, shortly after I began my “Book Nook” column of book reviews, I conducted an unscientific poll in which I asked readers and passing acquaintances what their favorite book was.
The result was to be expected at that time. Number 1 was The Front Runner, Patricia Nell Warren’s 1974 tale of the love between a college track star and his coach. Number 2 was Rita Mae Brown’s autobiographical novel Rubyfruit Jungle (1973). Though I continued to write “The Book Nook” until 2006, never again did I try to conduct a public opinion poll. Others did a better job. A 2004 poll conducted by AfterElton.com revealed that their readers’ favorite book was Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin (1978), an improvement over Warren’s romance.
Though favorite book polls are popularity contests, other lists of books seek to establish a definitive list of greatest books. A canon was originally defined as “a collection or list of sacred books accepted as genuine.” Later the definition was extended to include a “list of works considered to be permanently established as being of the highest quality.” In The Gay Canon: Great Books Every Gay Man Should Read (1998), author Robert Drake “seeks to establish the present bedrock of gay literary culture.” Drake’s canon featured one hundred titles and ranged from the Biblical book of Samuel (for the David and Jonathan story) to David Watmough’s 1998 novel I Told You So. Not to be outdone, the Publishing Triangle published a list of one hundred great novels in 2004, in which Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice was Number 1. I contributed to the discussion when, for the new millennium, I compiled a list of the Top 100 LGBT Books of the 20th Century for the Lambda Book Report. Number 1 was The Homosexual in America by Donald Webster Cory (1951), not literary but influential. Literary excellence is recognized on an annual basis by the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards and (for LGBTQ books) by the Stonewall Book Awards, Publishing Triangle Awards and Lambda Literary Awards.
Producing a working list of literary greats is something that instructors of LGBTQ studies need, and which some publishers seek to provide. One such product was provided by Dover Publications as part of its Dover Thrift Editions. Influential LGBTQ+ Works of the Nineteenth Century comes close to providing a canon for the Age of Progress, though fans of Emily Dickinson and John Addington Symonds may not agree. This digest consists of six classic works: Walt Whitman’s “Calamus” poems; Cecil Dreeme by Theodore Winthrop; Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu; “Songs and Dreams” by Agnes Mary Frances Robinson; The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde; and Edward Carpenter’s “Homogenic Love.” Though the Whitman poems and Dorian Gray are available at any bookstore, the others are so obscure that they are a revelation to most readers. Like other Dover Thrift Editions, Influential LGBTQ+ Works of the Nineteenth Century provides literary marvels at a cheap price ($9) and send the readers on their way to create their own literary canons.
