Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present

This classic cultural history draws on a rich variety of sources - from the writings of Casanova and Henry James to Ladies Home Journal and Adrienne Rich, along with trial records, love letters, pornography and more to explore 500 years of friendship and love between women. Lillian Faderman sheds new light on shifting theories of female sexuality and the changing status of women over the centuries. Surpassing the Love of Men demonstrates how nascent feminist values have always played a role in women's passions for one another and in men's reactions to them, from revulsion to ridicule to admiration. Hailed by the New York Times as "a welcome and needed history," this quietly revolutionary book interweaves forgotten and ignored strands of history in unexpected new ways. No person will finish it without his or her sensibilities changed.