Sometimes, the buzz created around the latest publishing phenoms can give the impression that the inclusion of LGBTQ characters in literature is something entirely new. To counteract this idea, here are our favourite queer books published at least fifty years ago (and some much longer than that). These are not stories about being queer, but ones that, subtly or not so subtly, include identities and relationships that can be read as such. Needless to say the list is far from exhaustive, and it rather reflects our own gay male bias.
Clicking on the cover will take you to the book's Goodreads page.
Ally: It may seem strange to start with a famous tale of heterosexual bigamy, but I do think that the relationship between Robert Audley and George Talboys is the most important one in Lady Audley's Secret even if the author did not intend it to be. In contrast, Crazy Pavements is hanging on to plausible deniability by the skin of its teeth, and its author later said that yes, of course Brian and Walter are a couple. To explain why To Love and Be Wise is included would mean spoilers, but it is safe to say that in Tey's other books Inspector Grant also has a tendency to notice handsome young men...
Marcus: There was a time when passionate friendship between men was quite an unproblematic thing to write about, with few readers suspecting this to be anything other than chaste. The beauty of this is that for those few, there is plenty of room for a gay interpretation, as with Bjarki and Hjalti in the Saga of King Hrolf, or the soldiers in Strange Meeting. Sometimes, though, the gay interpretation is the only one possible. We all know about Shakespeare and his boys playing girls playing boys, but The Honest Man's Fortune goes further: it has a page who is suspected of being a woman in disguise to justify another character's attraction to him, but who is undeniably male and undeniably (and requitedly) devoted to his master.
If you want to know more about the literary shift from m/m to m/f relationships, check out Straightforward.