Female Sexual Inversion

Between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, a number of women were diagnosed as sexual inverts in Britain and Europe. This book examines the ways in which female same-sex desires were represented across a wide range of Italian and British medical writings during this period.

Chiara Beccalossi has undertaken extensive archival research to bring to light new documents and give a detailed account of how the female invert was positioned alongside other figures of same-sex desires, such as the tribade-prostitute, the fiamma (flame), the nymphomaniac, and women with abnormal genitalia or bodily dysfunctions.

In this way this book shows the richness of medical representations of female same sex-desires that has previously been unexplored in historical scholarship. Review: 'Chiara Beccalossi makes several important and original contributions to the histories of sexuality and psychiatry. Above all, the author provides the first sustained analysis of medical approaches to female same-sex desires in Italy during this period. (...) Her archival research brings to light hitherto unexamined documents and discursive trends (...) It will undoubtedly become a valuable point of reference for researchers, postgraduate and undergraduate students in a range of disciplines.' - Charlotte Ross, History of Psychiatry 'Female Sexual Inversion is a very original book that is of considerable interest to historians of sexuality, medicine and the body.

One of its key strengths is Beccalossi's critical cross-national approach, which illuminates medical figurations of female same-sex desire, but also offers broader insights into the way in which sexual knowledge was articulated and circulated across national borders. The book also speaks to scholars working in other disciplines, such as literary and cultural studies, where representations of female same-sex desire are of central interest.' - Jana Funke, Social History of Medicine 'this work aims to revise the oversimplification that sees nineteenth-century medicine as a homogenous, monolithic and backward (...) By employing a close reading of medical literature, the author has brought to light and made sense of a huge amount of historical sources.' - Nerina Milletti, Passato e Presente

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