VARIANT WOMAN: JEANNETTE HOWARD FOSTER
by Marie J. Kuda



Scholar, librarian, educator, critic, author and poet Jeannette Howard Foster was born in Oak Park, Ill., in 1885. In 1935 she earned a Ph.D. in library science from the University of Chicago. Her monumental, pioneering book, Sex Variant Women in Literature: A Historical and Quantitative Survey, was the first scholarly work ever to study the lesbian in literature. The ripples of her influence are still being felt by the current generation of academics, writers, librarians and educators, and her contribution to the development of a lesbian culture is immense.

During Foster's long career she taught creative writing, literature, college English and library science and worked as librarian for, among other places, the special library of the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University. She was one of Dr. Alfred Kinsey's first librarians and also served as librarian to the President's Advisory Committee on Education in Washington, D.C.

Foster's Sex Variant Women in Literature is a scholarly work that Foster originally self- published in 1956 through a “vanity” press. It discusses, chronologically, the “variant ... emotional reaction [ s ] among women as these appear in literature.” She had difficulty in gaining access to much of the material she wished to consider for the study and wrote that “no class of printed matter except outright pornography has suffered more critical neglect, exclusion from libraries, or omission from collected works than variant belles-lettres.” She spent more than 30 years pursuing rare works.

Foster's book critically examines 324 examples of “variant women” in literature in such languages as French, German and English and from the ancient writers and the Bible through the mid-20th century. The assumptions Foster made in evaluating “variant” literature presaged later feminist criticism and remain unchallenged. Her pioneer work has been recognized as a cornerstone title for a variety of gay men and lesbians active in the counterculture as well as those interested in scholarly research, including Barbara Grier, who praised it as “essential to any collection of lesbian literature.”

In 1974 Barbara Gittings presented Foster with the third annual Gay Book Award from the then Task Force on Gay Liberation of the American Library Association, sparking a resurgence of interest in Foster's work. In 1975 Diana Press and in 1985 Naiad Press brought out paperback editions of Sex Variant Women in Literature, making Foster's work more readily available to a new generation of scholars.

Historians of gay and lesbian life such as Jonathan Katz and Lillian Faderman have acknowledged Foster's work as indispensable to their own. Chicago's Gerber/Hart Library used Sex Variant Women in Literature as a guide to collection development, eventually succeeding in obtaining a grant to purchase a significant body of lesbian titles drawn from her opus. It is difficult to find a work on lesbian literature or history that does not make some reference to Foster or her work.

Foster also contributed reviews, fiction, poetry and criticism to The Ladder under a variety of names, including her own. In 1976, Naiad published Foster's translation from the French of Renée Vivien's A Woman Appeared to Me, based on Vivien's stormy affairs with Violet Shilleto and Natalie Barney.

During the late 1970s, many well-known activists made pilgrimages to see Foster. She was praised and lionized. When her expenses began to exceed her resources, benefits and fundraisers were held around the country, further extolling her work and enhancing her reputation. Foster died in a nursing home in Pocahontas, Ark., in July 1981.

Adapted from the writings of Marie J. Kuda, including “Jeannette Howard Foster ( 1895—1981 ) , Literary Pioneer: A Personal Reflection” in Outlines newspaper, Nov. 11, 1998, and her Foster entry in the book Gay & Lesbian Literature.

Copyright 2008 by Marie J. Kuda

From Out and Proud in Chicago: An Overview of the City's Gay Community, edited by Tracy Baim, Surrey Books, 2008.

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