Universally cited as the text that ignited gay studies.
— Rolling Stone

"In many ways, the book that turned queer theory from a latent to a manifest discipline."
— Voice Literary Supplement

"Astoshingly powerful... Its insights are breathtaking and its careful attention to history, theory, and politics is exemplary."
— Gay Community News

"Stunning and original readings."
— Raritan

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick is the author of Tendencies, The Coherence of Gothic Conventions, and Epistemology of the Closet.

Introduction
i. Homosocial Desire
ii. Sexual Politics and Sexual Meaning
iii. Sex or History?
iv. What This Book Does
1. Gender Asymmetry and Erotic Triangles
2. Swan in Love: The Example of Shakespeare's Sonnets
3. The Country Wife: Anatomies of Male Homosocial Desire
4. A Sentimental Journey: Sexualism and the Citizen of the World
5. Toward the Gothic: Terrorism and Homosexual Panic
6. Murder Incorporated: Confessions of a Justified Sinner
7. Tennyson's Princess: One Bride for Seven Brothers
8. Adam Bede and Henry Esmond: Homosocial Desire and the Historicity of the Female
9. Homophobia, Misogyny, and Capital: The Example of Our Mutual Friend
10. Up the Postern Stair: Edwin Drood and the Homophobia of Empire
Coda: Toward the Twentieth Century: English Readers of Whitman