This article is, of course, the one that brought the entire collection to my attention, when Ursula Whitcher cited it as one of the strands of inspiration for her story "The Spirits of Cabassus" published as part of this year's fiction series. Direct references to female same-sex desire are rare in many eras, and the tantalizing glimpses we get aren't always put in a positive light in the original sources. But for a historical fiction author, those glimpses can be the spark to kindle a fire. Because the glimpses can be fragmentary and offered up in biased acounts, there's often a temptation to expand them into a more complete story--one that centers and is sympathetic to the sapphic figure. I have a whole laundry list of historic anecdotes that I'd like to turn into fiction, when I have the time.
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