LGBT Literature in the Dutch-language area comprises works by writers from Flanders and the Netherlands using themes or characters that form a part of, or are related to, sexual diversity. According to Gerrit Komrij, having at least two of the following characteristics makes someone a LGBT author:Lekker lezen: homo- en lesboliteratuur - circa 1750 tot nu at Authors who are LGBT. Authors who wrote for a LGBT audience. Authors who wrote about LGBT topics.

The first of these authors owed much to the late-19th-century decadent literature, with names like Georges Eekhoud in Belgium and Jacob Israël de Haan in the Netherlands. After the Second World War, Gerard Reve, and later Gerrit Komrij and Tom Lanoye became the leading names.

Most of these LGBT writers are Dutch-language writers contributing to Dutch-language literature, some of them acquiring a place in the Canon of Dutch Literature.

Before the late 19th century

Before the last decades of the 19th century, words like uranism, homosexual, sapphism, lesbian and transvestite did not exist. Being called a true Sappho of Lesbos was a high compliment for female poets, without sexual connotations.Meijer 1998, Introduction pp. 1-23 Words like sodomy, pederast and hermaphrodite existed and had their Dutch-language counterpart, but only very partially covered what would become LGBT (Dutch equivalent: holebi) in a more modern understanding.Hekma 2004, p. 3 Generally the older terms, most of all sodomy, had a negative connotation. Writing about these topics was usually either pornographic or in terms of condemnable (religious) sin. From the 19th century these subjects were also more often treated in medical science, which led to the more modern terminology.

Authors writing in a positive manner about bonds between people of the same sex spoke about friendship (in Dutch, vriendschap). Such friendships could be qualified as romantic friendships. Whether there was a component of sexuality is unclear and if so, not outspoken. Friendship was certainly not always a euphemism for something more, nor even for Platonic love.

A friendship was recorded between the writers Betje Wolff and Aagje Deken: they also wrote about the topic of true friendship. Johannes Kneppelhout, choosing Klikspaan (meaning "snitch") as pen name for some of his writings, was a 19th-century example of writing about friendship in this sense, for example in his 1875 Een beroemde knaap (A Famous Boy).

Also Guido Gezelle does not really qualify as an LGBT writer in Komrij's definition: as a Catholic priest he certainly did not write explicitly for a gay audience, nor was any of his writing strictly speaking about homosexuality. Nonetheless Dien avond en die rooze (That Evening and that Rose) is widely understood to have been a love-poem for Eugène van Oye, one of his students he had befriended.

Fin de siècle Late-19th-century Dutch writers who tried to write more explicit LGBT literature include Louis Couperus. Georges Eekhoud published Escal-Vigor in 1899. In the early 20th century, Jacob Israël de Haan started publishing his LGBT-themed works.

Tachtigers

For Couperus' generation of Dutch-language authors, known as the Tachtigers, writing openly about homosexuals in novels was impossible, while writing about antiquity left more leeway.Schoonhoven 2003Hekma 1990 p. 66 In 1891 Couperus published his novel Noodlot with an 'effeminate' protagonist, while his more explicit novel De berg van licht (1904–5) employed the technique of placing the action in ancient Rome. It was generally known that Couperus was homosexual.

Arnold Aletrino was an LGBT Tachtiger writing both fiction and non-fiction.

Other Tachtigers with same-sex tendencies, like Willem Kloos, writing passionate poems about men, and Lodewijk van Deyssel, describing a special friendship with one of his fellow students in his 1889 De kleine republiek, repressed their feelings.Hekma 2004, p. 28 Albert Verwey's cycle of 44 sonnets, Van de liefde die vriendschap heet (On Love that is Named Friendship), written in response to Kloos' passion for him, was perceived as coded homoeroticism, although mostly about spiritual love in intent.

Georges Eekhoud Georges Eekhoud was a Flemish author writing in French. In 1899 his LGBT themed novel Escal-Vigor was published. It led to a trial in 1900, which Eekhoud won.Rob Delvigne and Leo Ross. Introduction to De Haan's Nerveuze Vertellingen (1983) p. 8-50

Hélène van Zuylen After marriage Hélène van Zuylen, by birth a French Rothschild, came to live in a castle near Utrecht. Together with her English lover Renée Vivien she published poems and novels in French, among others in 1904 L'Être double, a novel on androgyny (under the pseudonym Paule Riversdale).

Jacob Israël de Haan Jacob Israël de Haan describes living in the Netherlands as a nightmare that continues after waking up, and looked for Eekhoud as an ally to escape from this narrowminded societyDe Haan 1983 p. 52 when dedicating his "rape of Jesus" short story to him. The two authors kept in contact by letter.Rob Delvigne and Leo Ross. "Ik ben toch zo innig blij dat u mijn vriend bent" in De Revisor Nr. 3 (1982) pp. 61-71

For his style, De Haan was indebted to Couperus. De Haan's style oscillates between the l'art pour l'art style of the Tachtigers and a more engaged, less embellished style. His Tachtigers friends had given him however little support when getting in trouble after the publication of his first explicit gay novel Pijpelijntjes in 1904. In the first edition of the book de Haan's friend Arnold Aletrino had been portrayed too recognisable.

Light reading Under the guise of moralizing against fornication, some authors went into great detail describing libidinous topics. Also for homosexuality this genre was practiced, for instance Feenstra Kuiper's 1905 illustrated pornographic novel Jeugdige zondaars te Constantinopel (Youthful Sinners in Constantinople), reading as a gay tour guide to the city.

Easy-reading novels, usually with a melodramatic plot, were provided by M. J. J. Exler (Levensleed, 1911), Marie Metz-Koning, and Maurits Wagenvoort (Het koffiehuis met de roode buisjes, 1916).Hekma 2004, p. 51

A play about Oscar Wilde was written by Adolphe Engers in 1917.

Non-fiction In 1883 N. B. Donkersloot, editor of a medical journal, was the first to publish a testimony originally written in Dutch of a man preferring homosexual sex.Hekma 2004, p. 32-33 Around this time most Dutch-language medical literature on the subject borrowed from foreign examples, mostly from Germany and France.Hekma 2004, p. 31-35

From 1897 to 1908 Arnold Aletrino published his non-fiction works about uranism, in which he described chaste friendship as a superior form of uranism.Hekma 2004, p. 36-37 Lucien von Römer, who had written love poetry for a man when he was young, published in Magnus Hirschfeld's journal Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen in the early 20th century. He was also the first to conduct an inquiry on sexual behavior, and defended the sexual act for homosexuals. His major work was Het uranisch gezin (The Uranian Family, 1905).Hekma 2004, p. 37-39

In 1911 a new article in Dutch law (248bis) discriminated against homosexuality. Jacob Schorer, a lawyer, started publishing against this law.Schorer 1911 Aletrino and Römer supported him, but no longer published on the subject. Still before the First World War, Hubertus J. Schouten published on similar topics under various pen-names.Hekma 2004, p. 43-44

Interbellum

Maria Nys, a Belgian wartime refugee, moved in English literary circles such as the Bloomsbury Group and became Mrs. Aldous Huxley. A lesbian, her contributions to literature are limited; the best known is her tampering with the text of Lady Chatterley's Lover, which led its author, D. H. Lawrence, to be discontented with the first printing of that work.Stan Lauryssens. Mijn heerlijke nieuwe wereld (2001)

During his Berlin period (1918–21), Belgian avant-garde poet Paul van Ostaijen wrote homoerotic letters, and may have experimented with gay sex.Pleij 1996

In 1919 poet Pieter Cornelis Boutens was hiding behind a fictional name when he published his homoerotic Strophen uit de nalatenschap van Andries de Hoghe. In 1930 he was refused a knighthood for rumours of his homosexuality.Snijders 2003 Other poets in the Netherlands included Willem de Mérode, pen name for W. E. Keuning (Ganymedes, illustrated by Johan Dijkstra, 1924) and Willem Arondeus (his homoerotic poems Afzijdige Strofen were however only published many years after his death).Hekma 2004, p. 52-53

New melodramatic novels, similar in plot to those that were published before the end of the war, were published by J. H. François, writing under the pen name Charlie van Heezen (Anders, 1918 and Het masker, 1922), Johan de Meester (Walmende lampen, 1920), Bernard Brondgeest (Doolhof, 1921), Wilma (God's gevangene, 1923), and Adolphe Engers together with Ernst Winar (Peccavi...??? Roman uit het Haagsche leven, 1920). A gay play Wat niet mag... was written by J. M. IJssel de Schepper-Beckers in 1922.Hekma 2004, p. 53

Avant-garde artist Til Brugman, fluent in several languages, publishes poems from 1923. She also writes literary grotesques, amongst others on sexual minorities, which she belonged to, living together with LGBT lovers like Hannah Höch. Carry van Bruggen, sister of Jacob Israël de Haan, published her partly autobiographical novel Eva in 1927. David, the homosexual brother of Eva in the novel, is to a certain extent modelled after the author's brother Jacob Israël. Van Bruggen portrays the main character of her novel as bisexual.

Edith Werkendam lived in the Netherlands and Belgium. Several of her novels are about LGBT topics, among which De goddelijke zonde about bisexuality, published in 1928.Ten Duis 2013 Josine Reuling's 1937 novel Terug naar het eiland can be read as a commentary on Radclyffe Hall's 1928 The Well of Loneliness.Ten Duis 2013, pp. 31-32 Jef Last published two gay novels: Zuiderzee (1934) and Het huis zonder vensters (1935). In 1936 Last and André Gide travelled across the Soviet Union. Both published about this trip, with some attention to LGBT topics, Gide in 1936 and Last in 1966 (Mijn vriend André Gide).Hekma 2004, p. 55-56 Together with Harry Wilde Last published a novel (Kruisgang der jeugd, 1939) about Marinus van der Lubbe, against a trend that equalled homosexuality with Nazism.Hekma 2004, p. 56 After the war there were Last's De jeugd van Judas (1962) and the pornographic De zeven caramboles (posthumous, 1973).

Decadent poets were attacked by Seerp Anema in his 1926 Moderne Kunst en Ontaarding. Jacob Anton Schorer continued to publicize in defense of homosexuality in the period between the wars. A. J. Luikinga published under the pen name Commutator, among others his 1927 defense Homosexualiteit.Hekma 2004, p. 55 In 1929 Ernest Michel published an anti-gay writing Anti-homo: Een geschrift tegen de weekdieren onzer samenleving.Hekma 2004, p. 58 Koos Vorrink warned against homosexuality in his 1933 Om de vrije mens der nieuwe gemeenschap: Opvoeding tot het demokratiese socialisme. 1934 publications by J. H. van der Hoop (Homosexualiteit) and Benno J. Stokvis (Homosexualiteit en strafrecht) were equally heteronormative.Hekma 2004 p. 56 Stokvis' 1939 De homosexueelen: 35 biographieën gave insight in daily life of LGBT people. Medical publications concentrated on possible cures for homosexuality, like castration (e.g. G. Sanders Het castratievraagstuk, 1935).Hekma 2004, p. 48 L. Bender's 1937 Verderfelijke propaganda summarized the Catholic rejection of homosexuality.Hekma 2004, p. 59

A few months before the second world war came to the Netherlands Jaap van Leeuwen (pen name: Arent van Santhorst), Nico Engelschman (pen name: Bob Angelo) and Hann Diekmann became the authors and editors of a new periodical Levensrecht defending LGBT rights.

After the Second World War