ABSTRACT
Lesbians are seemingly invisible in feminist history. In order to bring the lesbian back to the centre of women's history, I want to suggest that we need to look beyond feminist organizations, movement leaders or famous writers and shift our focus to cultural images, theatre stars, fashion and the ephemera of an age. Through this documentation we can see, I believe, the ways in which substantial changes in attitudes and behaviour towards women, and more specifically, lesbians occur. Let me begin with a discussion of what I see as certain limits in the ways in which we research and write lesbian history and, by implication, feminist history. Then, through an example drawn from the period 1 890-- 1 925 , I will suggest an alternative way of writing about lesbianism and feminism in modern European history.
