Queer empathy: or, reading/writing the queer in Victorian poetry

Any study of Victorian sexuality provides a cultural mirror for our own contemporary anxieties about sexual difference, homophobia, alternative masculinities and the range of perversities that characterizes 'queer' practices. This article explores notions of queer subjectivity and empathy in writer/reader relations as they inform cross-gender or transsexual play in late Victorian poetics, as demonstrated by the controversial William Sharp/Fiona Macleod impersonation.