An examination of how female same-sex desires were represented in a wide range of Italian and British medical writings, 1870-1920. It shows how the psychiatric category of sexual inversion was positioned alongside other medical ideas of same-sex desires, such as the virago, tribade-prostitute, fiamma and gynaecological explanations.

CHIARA BECCALOSSI is a Lecturer in the History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University. She has published a number of articles on the history of sexuality and history of medicine, and is the co-editor of A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Age of Empire (2011) with Ivan Crozier.

Acknowledgements Note on terminology Abbreviations PART I Introduction: Female Sexual Inversion and other Medical Embodiments of Female Same-Sex Desires in Italy and Britain, circa 1870-1920 Sexuality in Post-Risorgimento Italy and Victorian Britain PART II Italy: The Fashionable Psychiatric Disorder of Sexual Inversion and Other Medical Embodiments of Same-Sex Desires Britain: Oblique Discourses Surrounding 'Lesbic Love' PART III Cesare Lombroso and Italian Criminal Anthropology Pasquale Penta, 'First Class Sexologist' Havelock Ellis and Sex Psychology William Blair-Bell and Gynaecology Concluding Remarks Bibliography Index