This set is a collection of analytic, scholarly, encyclopedic essays about an increasingly vibrant and diverse literary tradition. It examines poems, plays, novels, and short fiction from ancient times to the present day. It explores the lives of relevant writers, the reception of relevant texts, and the history of the tradition as it has unfolded—slowly at first, and then more quickly—over the last four thousand years. It deals with the challenges (both literary and personal) writers in this tradition have faced as well as the ways those challenges were gradually diminished. It emphasizes the literary qualities of LGBTQ+ literature while also setting such literature in its social, historical, and cultural contexts.