Baldwin's work fictionalizes fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures. His essays and novels wrestled with questions of race, masculinity, and sexuality in a way that seemed so ahead of its time. He wrote of gay men learning to accept themselves years before the Gay Liberation Movement. 

In addition to writing, Baldwin was also a well-known, and controversial, public figure and orator, especially during the civil rights movement in the United States.

In recent years, his words have been adapted into two feature films: I Am Not Your Negro and If Beale Street Could Talk. 

During the inter-war period, Woolf was an important part of London's literary and artistic society. Her best-known works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928). She is also known for her essays, including A Room of One's Own (1929). Woolf became one of the central subjects of the 1970s movement of feminist criticism and her works have since attracted much attention and widespread commentary for "inspiring feminism".

In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf, and in 1917, the couple founded the Hogarth Press, which published much of her work. She also had romantic relationships with women, including Vita Sackville-West, who also published her books through Hogarth Press. Both women's literature became inspired by their relationship, which lasted until Woolf's death. 

We recommend reading Orlando: A Biography, one of Woolf’s novels published in 1928, which was inspired by the tumultuous family history of the aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, Woolf's lover and close friend. The book describes the adventures of a poet who changes sex from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeting the key figures of English literary history. Considered a feminist classic, the book has been written about extensively by scholars of women's writing and gender and transgender studies.

He was born in Dublin into a family of intellectuals, and attended Trinity College and Oxford, where he began earning a reputation for his flamboyance and decadence. These were characteristics of Aestheticism, a movement that promoted “Art for Art’s sake” and the importance of beauty over meaning, which Wilde adopted wholeheartedly.

Wilde’s steadfast belief in his own sexuality, and his subsequent martyrdom for it, have made his writings all the more vital for the homosexual community after him. Homosexuality was not made legal in the UK until 1967, and voices like Wilde’s provide both comfort and hope in the face of injustice, ignorance and hatred. “To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul”, Wilde wrote in his powerful unsent letter De Profundis, created in prison and part love letter, part treatise on spirituality, the self and religion.

We recommend The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray.

Upon receipt of the typescript of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s editor panicked at what he saw. Contained within its pages was material he feared readers would find “offensive” — especially instances of graphic homosexual content. He proceeded to go through the typescript with his pencil, cleaning it up until he made it “acceptable to the most fastidious taste.” Wilde did not see these changes until his novel appeared in print. Even in its redacted form, the novel caused public outcry. The British press condemned it as “vulgar,” “unclean,” “poisonous,” “discreditable,” and “a sham.” When Wilde later enlarged the novel for publication in book form, he responded to his critics by further toning down its “immoral” elements.

The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray restores all of the material removed by the novel's first editor.

Johnson was a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front and an active voice in American LGBTQ+ politics for over thirty years. She was also a popular figure in New York City's gay and art scene, modeling for Andy Warhol, and performing onstage with the drag performance troupe Hot Peaches.

"The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo" (2005) chronicles the life and art of the great Mexican painter as never before, framing Kahlo's life in relation to the historical and cultural influences that inspired her and defined the first half of the 20th century. 

In 1936, he developed the idea for the Universal Turing Machine, the basis for the first computer, and a test for artificial intelligence in 1950, which is still used today. He is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.

Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts and died in 1954. Following a public campaign in 2009, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for "the appalling way [Turing] was treated". The term "Alan Turing law" is now used informally to refer to a 2017 law in the United Kingdom that retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts. 

Waters's films contain elements of postmodern comedy and surrealism.His early campy movies present exaggerated characters in outrageous situations with hyperbolic dialogue. Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living, which he labeled the Trash Trilogy, pushed hard at the boundaries of conventional propriety and censorship.

Waters's films became Drag Queen Divine's primary star vehicles. All of Waters's early films were shot in the Baltimore area with his company of local actors, the Dreamlanders—which, in addition to Divine, included Mink Stole, Cookie Mueller, Edith Massey, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, Susan Walsh, and others.

As one of the earliest openly gay directors, Waters is an avid supporter of gay rights and gay pride. In 2004, he received the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Stephen F. Kolzak Award for his work combating homophobia. In 2008, he received a New York Leadership Award from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.