Description
Book SynopsisHow eighteenth-century artists created works that expressed their desire for other women.
Trade Review"As its lyrical title suggests,
Sister Arts, Lisa Moore's loving account of the unusual and haunting works produced by her four subjects-elegiac friendship poems, picturesque landscape designs, leaf collages and scrapbooks, collections of flowers, shells, and butterflies-at once illuminates and charms, deepening our understanding both of female–female intimacy and the elegantly subversive means women in past centuries found to express such devotion." —Terry Castle
"Lisa Moore recounts the fascinating stories of four eighteenth-century women whose lesbian-like relationships were instrumental in inspiring and fostering their work as artists of the landscape. Sister Arts is an indispensible contribution to the project of establishing a readable record of lesbian desire in the historical past." —Lillian Faderman, author of Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present
Table of ContentsPreface: Listening to Gossip in the Queer Archives
Introduction: Lesbian Genres and Eighteenth-Century Landscapes
1. Queer Gardens: Mary Delany’s Flowers and Friendships
2. A Connoisseur in Friendship: The Duchess of Portland’s Collections and Communities
3. The Voice of Friendship, Torn from the Scene: Anna Seward’s Landscapes of Lesbian Melancholy
4. The Landscape Which She Drew: Sarah Pierce and the Lesbian Georgic
Conclusion. The Persistence of Lesbian Genres: A Circuit Garden
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
