Queer Communism and the Ministry of Love

'Salton-Cox makes an exciting contribution to our understanding of the British literary left in the 1930s. Tracing the intricate crossings of queer sexualities, middle-class class identities, and proletarian politics, this study turns a queer eye on leftist writers both canonical and lesser-known, yielding fresh critical insights into this unique period. ' Tyrus Miller, University of California-Irvine The first book-length study to provide a detailed examination of a distinctive crossroads in the history of the left Queer Communism reconstructs queer writers' engagements with a series of wide-ranging Marxist aesthetic debates, social forms and political strategies. Through case studies of Christopher Isherwood and Sylvia Townsend Warner, Salton-Cox argues that queer writing of the 1930s was deeply embedded in a network of transnational leftist formations stretching across Weimar Germany, Soviet Russia, Spain and China. Probing the left's mounting heteronormativity in the late 30s and 40s in chapters on Katharine Burdekin and George Orwell, Queer Communism also traces the genesis of post-war sexual politics in Popular Front antifascism. Salton-Cox's study transforms current narratives of mid-century literary, cultural and intellectual history from a queer Marxist perspective. The first book-length study to provide a detailed examination of the distinctive crossroads in the history of the left Glyn Salton-Cox is Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Cover image: © Genevieve Stawski Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress. com ISBN 978-1-4744-2331-1 Barcode