In nineteenth-century Britain, the word queer was associated not only with same-sex desire but also with irregular forms of financial association and trust. Queer Economic Dissonance and Victorian Literature centers this forgotten facet of queer by recovering an alternative economic narrative of the Victorian period: one of economic excess, waste, debt, and downward mobility. Drawing on insights from intersectional queer theory and economic literary criticism, as well as astute readings of works by Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Mary Seacole, George Eliot, and Oscar Wilde, Meg Dobbins argues that eccentric economic figures like Black entrepreneurs, childless widows, and working-class benefactors represent sites of queerness––forms of economic desire, identity, strategy, or relation that become sites of friction within the developing social and institutional norms of nineteenth-century capitalism. Dobbins argues that Victorian authors document the everyday economic struggles of those cast aside, left behind, and fundamentally transfigured by modern capitalism. Rather than rejecting capitalist ideology, these authors queer socioeconomic norms, shedding light on the provocative ways Victorians made capitalism livable, and even pleasurable. In this way, Queer Economic Dissonance rearticulates the link between erotic and economic forms of dissonance in capitalist society.

Knowing that queer voices have been making themselves heard in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria decades before Stonewall, editors Gary Schmidt and Merrill Cole curated thrilling snapshots of prose fiction from more than twenty contemporary writers whose work defies stereotypes, disciplines, and expectations. These authors produce fiction for adults and young people that celebrates the multiplicity of the present, casts a queer eye on the past, and interrogates LGBTQ+ futures.

These outstanding texts exemplify the glittering variety of styles, themes, settings, and subjects addressed by openly queer authors who write in German today. They explore identity, sexuality, history, fantasy, loss, and discovery. Their authors, narrators, and characters explore gender nonconformity and living queer everywhere from city centers to rural communities. They are gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, and nonbinary. They are exiles, immigrants, and travelers through time and space.

Witty, titillating, and a delight to read, Quertext opens up new worlds of experience for readers interested in queer life beyond the Anglophone world.

Featuring work by Jürgen Bauer • Ella Blix • Claudia Breitsprecher • Lovis Cassaris • Gunther Geltinger • Joachim Helfer • Odile Kennel • Friedrich Kröhnke • Anja Kümmel • Marko Martin • Hans Pleschinski • Christoph Poschenrieder • Peter Rehberg • Michael Roes • Sasha Marianna Salzmann • Angela Steidele • Antje Rávik Strubel • Alain Claude Sulzer • Antje Wagner • J. Walther • Tania Witte • Yusuf Yeşilöz