Queer Communism and the Ministry of Love: Sexual Revolution in British Writing of the 1930s

Provides 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.

Key Features:
Rearticulates major figures with lesser known authors
A unique exploration of the transnational formation of queer leftist writing in 1930s Britain informed by detailed research on Weimar Berlin, British , and the Soviet Union
A queer Marxist critique of anti-fascist fiction and the sexual politics of midcentury Britain
Redefines our understanding of 1930s literary history, queer theory, and Marxism