The present work, SEX VARIANT WOMEN IN LITERATURE, is a unique undertaking. The author was troubled in her student days by her lack of knowledge regarding female homosexuality. The need for understanding has resulted in a long search for evidence in literature, a field with which she was familiar. She has come to believe that imaginative as well as scientific writing is a mirror of human sexual behavior which should be given serious attention. Some readers may question the propriety or the motives in associating the personal lives of authors with their writings. Poetry loses some of its charm through the suggestion that it might be an expression of the writer’s sexual maladjustment. But as a matter of fact it is beginning to seem that all imaginative writings are attempts to find libidinous satisfaction in fantasy. Science may never be able to support this impression by its laborious methods of securing evidence, but the author’s review of the literature of twenty centuries leaves little doubt of its validity. In SEX VARIANT WOMEN IN LITERATURE the author has called attention to lesbian tendencies wherever she has found them. She has made no attempt to estimate what proportion of imaginative writing may be the work of lesbians. She has not confined herself to literary classics but has accepted the fact that human beings reveal themselves in whatever they read and write. Sexual variance shows itself in so many different ways that all types of imaginative writings have to be studied if we are to understand human motivations and behavior. GEORGE W. HENRY, M.D. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For help in pursuing this study the author owes many debts of gratitude, first to friends who added chance-read titles to the bibliography; especially to those who had no basic interest in the subject. An even heavier debt is due all the librarians who made available rare or restricted material, negotiated interlibrary loans, or merely rendered much ordinary service. Staffs of the following institutions deserve special thanks: the Union Catalogs of the Library of Congress and the Philadelphia Bibliographic Center; the libraries of Bryn Mawr College, the University of Chicago, Emory University, Indiana University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Swarthmore College, and Yale University; the medical libraries of Emory University Hospital, the New York Academy of Medicine, and the Philadelphia College of Physicians; the public libraries of Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia; and the Library of Congress.