Difference and Desire: homoeroticism, gender and nation in the life and fiction of Amy Dillwyn

When in 1872 Amy Dillwyn began to refer to her friend, Olive Talbot, as her 'wife' in her private diaries, the term 'lesbian' (or the idea of a 'lesbian identity') was not available. In later life Dillwyn would come to relish what she called her 'difference' which she accentuated by her unconventional dress, her habit of smoking a cigar in public and her outspoken independence. A pioneering female British industrialist, she transformed a bankrupt spelter works into a profitable concern saving 300 jobs. She was also renowned for her work for social justice, supporting striking seamstresses and campaigning for the vote.

As a novelist, she explored class tensions, adopting the working class male voice of a rioter in one novel (which was quickly translated into Russian and published by the leading revolutionary journal on the basis of its social radicalism). Her fiction is important as an early example of feminist (New Woman) writing and it is an outstanding example of Victorian 'lesbian fiction', innovative and ardent in its coded expression of love for another woman. In an historical context, Dillwyn's writing is both 'pre-sexology' (prior to the major publications on inversion) and contemporary with the development of these paradigms.

The research project will culminate in a book which presents an in-depth study of an important lesbian figure and uses personal papers to revise the suppressed biography of Amy Dillwyn. These papers, alongside contemporary literary theories, will inform a reading of her fiction as an example of 'lesbian' literature. In addition to a focus on sexuality, the book will discuss Dillwyn's 'feminism' and her 'nationalism'. It will reflect on her sometimes troubled sense of belonging to a minority ethnic group and, at the same time, to an oppressive exploitative class of landowners and politicians. The relationship between these different types of identity will be explored in a final chapter.

The book will begin with a chapter on her life and the loves and convictions which are expressed in the diaries and represented later in her fiction. The book will include chapters on: New Woman writing and Dillwyn's literary career (including her work as a reviewer and critiquing her fiction in comparison with other 'feminist' writing of the period); her representation of Wales including her nationalist and radical representation of class conflict; an overview of her lesbian narratives followed by further chapters exploring how Dillwyn encoded lesbian desire through cross-class disguise and masquerade and how she represented gender as performance through her playful or violent use of dress and jewellery. Finally it will end by bringing together theories of (Welsh) national or ethnic identity and lesbian identity in a chapter entitled 'Queer Nation?'.

Website and Public Events:
There is considerable interest in Amy Dillwyn and her family in Glamorganshire. In addition to the book, there will be a website offering further information about Amy Dillwyn's extraordinary family and her non-literary activities in Wales and a series of talks and events, including a literary tour and a symposium incorporating an exhibition and a multi-media theatre production based on my research. The website and events will engage with the wider public whose interest in Amy Dillwyn as a local character is still strong. These activities are associated with a larger Dillwyn project which brings together academics, archivists, family representatives and members of the wider community to document the lives of the Dillwyn family. In addition to the Dillwyn website, transcripts of the diaries of William Dillwyn (the Ameican Quaker anti-slavery campaigner), Lewis Weston Dillwyn (pioneering botanist), Lewis Llewelyn Dillwyn (Liberal MP and advocate of home rule) and John Dillwyn Llewelyn (pioneering botanist, photographer and astronomer) have been prepared by a family member and links to these online diaries will be

Who will benefit from this research?
The academic beneficiaries are discussed in the relevant section above; this section concentrates on the wider non-academic beneficiaries. There are three principal groups who will benefit directly from the research and outputs planned: museums, local history groups and amateur historians; lesbian communities and the wider public whose awareness of lesbian history will be expanded.

How will they benefit from this research?

Museums: Glamorganshire museums, including the National Waterfront Museum and Swansea Museum will benefit from the Dillwyn Symposium and Exhibition. The event will take place in Swansea Museum and alert interested parties to the long connection of the Dillwyn family with the museum (formerly the South Wales Institution set up to promote the advance of science and knowledge in the nineteenth century). In the longer term it is anticipated that there will be increased footfall to the Museum as a result of long-term publicity on the project website and associated diary websites (these last are not part of this project but will be highlighted by the project). There will also be increased footfall to the National Waterfront Museum as a result of the Dillwyn Symposium and Exhibition because their Dillwyn artefacts and history of women's suffrage artefacts will be highlighted by the event and project website.

Amateur Historians/History Groups: One of the outputs will be a local history talk (potentially more than one). This will address the longstanding interest in Amy Dillwyn demonstrated recently by her inclusion in the International Women's Day exhibition at the National Waterfront Museum. The Glamorgan History Society and smaller history groups will be interested in the research, thus there is the potential to reach several hundred interested members of the public directly through history groups and talks. The project website will greatly increase this audience. Full details of this website and its reciprocal links is given in the Case for Support (outputs).

Lesbian community: Lesbian history has been so occluded as to deny the existence of lesbians in history. Although academic studies rightly complicate any attempt to impose anachronistically a modern concept of lesbian identity on pre-sexologist individuals, the discussion of the lives, works and achievements of women who loved women is crucial. Firstly because it undermines the homophobic refusal to acknowledge sexual difference (lesbians are invisible therefore they don't exist). Secondly because it shows that 'lesbian' women made important contributions to their society (political, social, economic) and their works of art or literature are culturally important. As the LGBT History website claims: "Now it's time we began to deal with the legacy of silence. This is not only in the interests of LGBT people but of our whole society. Silence breeds ignorance and distorted imaginings. From these come, at best, embarrassment; at worst, hostility and hate crimes. ... To understand our present and imagine our future, we must first gain insight into our past. This is true of us as individuals; it is also true of societies." [www.lgbthistorymonth.org.uk]

Reaching this wider, more diffuse community will be primarily achieved via interest-group websites and magazines. Advice will be sought from the LGBT history month organisers and the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Press releases will target mainstream lesbian magazines. The republication of the most important of Amy Dillwyn's lesbian novels (Honno, 2012) will also be used to promote my wider research as it can be listed amongst 'lesbian books' on many more websites which use Amazon-generated lists.

The primary impact then will be on enlarging lesbian history and awareness and there the benefits are cultural and implicitly political rather than economic.