Another difficulty is gaining access to titles of which record has been found. No class of printed matter except outright pornography has suffered more critical neglect, exclusion from libraries, or omission from collected works than variant belles-lettres. Even items by recognized masters, such as Henry James’s _The Bostonians_ and Maupassant’s “Paul’s Mistress,” have been omitted from inclusive editions issued by reputable publishers. When owned by libraries such titles are often catalogued obscurely, or impounded in special collections almost inaccessible to the public, or they have been “lost”—most probably stolen—and not replaced. Of Catulle Mendès’s _Méphistophéla_, for example, which ran to half a dozen printings in French and as many in English between 1890 and 1910, only four copies are recorded in the United States among the nearly fifteen million entries in the Library of Congress Union Catalog. Despite such handicaps, however, persistent search eventually reaches a point where the majority of new references prove duplicates of older discoveries, and the jealous pursuit of new volumes produces diminishing returns in that the items when located prove of only trifling significance. Thus, while the degree of completeness attained is not that of the statistician, it is believed sufficient to provide a reliable historical overview. Along with completeness another ideal in work of this sort is to include nothing which has not been seen at first hand, but because of the difficulties just outlined some inaccessible works have been admitted when reviews or other records clearly indicate their importance and offer an adequate account of their content. For works well known and easily available in English, such as the poetry of Sappho or Gautier’s _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, a minimum of résumé will ordinarily be given, but in the case of scarce items, even when inferior, a fuller account will be necessary to render any discussion of them intelligible. A final note on punctuation should be included here. Direct quotation from original texts in any language, or from published translations of foreign works, will be indicated by the customary signs. The present writer’s own translations of foreign material will be enclosed in _single_ quotation marks. CHAPTER I. THE ANCIENT RECORD Sappho and Ruth