Homosexuality and literature: an introduction

‘I wish we were labelled,’ said Rickie. He wished that all the confidence and mutual knowledge that is born in such a place as Cambridge could be organized. People went down into the world saying, ‘We know and like each other; we shan’t forget.’ But they did forget, for man is so made that he cannot remember long without a symbol; he wished there was a society, a kind of friendship office, where the marriage of true minds could be registered. E.M. Forster, The Longest Journey (1907)