In rapid survey of this century’s English fiction certain rough divisions emerge. The first fifteen years might be called the age of innocence, in that no published work referred to overt lesbianism, variance was not a subject of dispute, and no particular school of psychological thought had come to the fore. After 1915 more sophistication was apparent and variance became a controversial issue, particularly in England where the struggle for suffrage exacerbated any reference to women’s departure from the feminine and domestic role. Thereafter, for a decade or so partisan shots echoed intermittently back and forth as they had in France a quarter-century earlier, with the difference, however, that now the attack frequently employed the batteries of Freud. During the first of these decades World War I exerted a perceptible influence, quickening cross-fertilization between continental and Anglo-American attitudes in general, and, in particular, leading to the translation after 1920 of enough French fiction so that occasionally specific influences could be detected in our own novels. Another aftermath of war was that relaxing of all sexual strictures which characterized the Twenties, and, in line with the growing freedom, literary treatments of variance multiplied rapidly, reaching a first peak in 1928. In that year Radclyffe Hall’s _Well of Loneliness_ incurred legal prosecution for its explicit defense of a lesbian woman.[1] The restrictive effect of this action was no more than local and temporary, and as usual in cases of censorship the long range result was wide publicity for the banned title and for others on related themes. Consequently, the number of novels giving attention to variance swelled to a second peak in the middle Thirties, but the general tone was altered. Authors were now more self-conscious. The best, if at all sympathetic, dealt more gingerly with the delicate subject than before the attack. The majority, of intermediate popular quality, were careful to sound a disparaging note. And there sprang up also for the first time in English the wave of mediocre work which always follows profitable publication of better material in any field. Some of these inferior tales were censorious, some defensive, but all were so unrestrained that in this country, at least, certain pressure groups, notably the Catholic League for Decency, were roused to crusade for wholesale suppression.