Yesterday was the annual Pride parade in NYC. This Thursday (June 28th) is the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots that ignited the modern movement for LGBT rights. It seems an appropriate time to acknowledge some of the historical contributions of LGBT people to the Gothic genre.

• Horace Walpole, who wrote the first Gothic novel, “The Castle of Otranto”, was almost certainly gay.
• William Beckford, author of “Vathek”, was gay.
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, scientist, statesman, driving force of German Romanticism, and author of the most famous rendition of “Faust”, was probably bisexual.
• Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of Mary Shelley, author of the feminist Gothic novel “Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman”, and founding voice of English feminism, was bisexual.
• Mary Shelley was deeply in love with Jane Williams, the lover (and de facto wife) of Percy’s friend Edward Williams (who died in the same boating accident as Percy). Mary and Jane shared a complex network of mutual friends and lovers.
• Lord Byron, satirized in Dr. Polidori’s “The Vampyre”, and therefore the model for all modern aristocratic bloodsuckers, was famously bisexual.
• Lady Caroline Lamb, who established the literary archetype of the “Byronic Hero” when she satirized her former lover Lord Byron in her Gothic novel “Glenarvon”, was bisexual.
• Oscar Wilde, author of “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, was of course gay, and suffered imprisonment under the sodomy laws of Victorian England.
• Vernon Lee (Violet Paget), famous for her ghost-filled tales of Italy, was lesbian.
• Daphne du Maurier, author of “Rebecca”, and of the stories upon which the movies “Don’t Look Now” and “The Birds” are based, was bisexual.

Of course the list is far from complete. Feel free to use the comments section to add names I’ve overlooked. Also I haven’t included any living authors, as they can speak for themselves.