‘A Fairly Average “White Middle‐Class” Species of Lesbian’: Lorna Gulston, Ireland and the Early Anglophone Lesbian Press, 1965–1980

ABSTRACT

This article examines the published writings of Lorna Gulston (c. 1932–2023), a hitherto unknown Northern Irish civil servant who wrote many articles for the earliest British lesbian magazines such as Arena Three, Sappho and Sequel . In doing so, the article asks: How did Gulston find her way onto the pages of these pioneering magazines? Did Gulston's contribution, obscure though it is in the memory of the movement today, matter in the overall arc of lesbian visibility and activism in twentieth‐century Ireland, north and south? Using the remarkably large volume of writing that Gulston published, chiefly in the years preceding the establishment of gay and lesbian activist organisations on the island of Ireland, the article suggests that Gulston was a rare example of an Irish activist who belonged to a ‘homophile’ generation of activists. In doing so, this article provides the first study of a woman based on the island of Ireland who considered herself part of the bridging generation between the early Sapphic currents of the early twentieth century and the post‐1968 liberation era. Ultimately, the article argues that Gulston's life and writings trouble the standard arc of Irish activist history.