======================================================================
=                      Jeannette_Howard_Foster                       =
======================================================================

                            Introduction
======================================================================
Jeannette Howard Foster (November 3, 1895 – July 26, 1981) was an
American librarian, professor, poet, and researcher in the field of
lesbian literature. She pioneered the study of popular fiction and
ephemera in order to excavate both overt and covert lesbian themes.
Her years of pioneering data collection culminated in her 1957 study
'Sex Variant Women in Literature', which has become a seminal resource
in LGBT studies. Initially self-published by Foster via Vantage Press,
it was photoduplicated and reissued in 1975 by Diana Press and
reissued in 1985 by Naiad Press with updating additions and commentary
by Barbara Grier.


                             Biography
======================================================================
Jeannette Howard Foster was born on November 3, 1895, in Oak Park,
Illinois, daughter of mechanical engineer Winslow Howard Foster (b.
January 10, 1869) and Anna Mabel Burr. Her family originated from New
England, and at least three of their female ancestors were condemned
as witches in the seventeenth century. After being sent to Sunday
School aged 4, Foster developed an infatuation with a female teacher
there, and in 1908 came across a story in St. Nicholas Magazine in
which a girl develops an infatuation with an older girl at boarding
school. This first encounter with female same-sex desire in print
marked the beginning of her search for female 'sex variants' in
literature.

Foster's mother insisted her daughter's become self sufficient through
being educated. Foster attended the University of Chicago, before
transferring to Rockford College and graduated with a degree in
chemistry in 1918. In 1920 she returned to the University of Chicago
and earned an MA in English in 1922. Foster spent a period teaching at
various institutions before earning a BLS from the Emory University
Library School in 1932. In 1935 she received a Ph.D. from the Graduate
Library School of the University of Chicago. Foster taught library
science at the Drexel Institute of Technology from 1937 to 1948, and
went on to become the librarian at the Institute for Sex Research at
Indiana University during the years 1948 to 1952, where she worked
with Alfred Kinsey.

In 1952 Foster left the Institute for Sex Research to move to Kansas
City with her partner Hazel Toliver (1909-1997), and Toliver's mother.
Foster started a new position at the University of Missouri- Kansas
City (UMKC) as a reference and interlibrary loan librarian. It was
while working at UMKC, in 1957, that Foster published her book 'Sex
Variant Women in Literature: A Historical and Quantitative Survey'.
Foster had spent over two decades researching and writing the work,
the first of its kind, which chronicled approximately 2600 years of
female 'sex variants' (lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals) in
literature. In 1960 Foster retired from UMKC and moved to St. Charles
with Toliver, her mother, and another lesbian companion of Toliver's,
Dorothy Ross (1905-1986). They lived there until 1974, when Toliver
retired and they all decided to finally settle in Pocahontas,
Arkansas. Foster's health had begun to decline in the mid-1960s, and
on 7 January 1974 she had lumbar spinal surgery which left her with
nerve damage. Foster opted to move into a nursing home to avoid
burdening her companions with her care, and on 1 April 1975 she moved
into the nearby Randolph County Nursing Home.

Foster was the recipient of the 1974 Stonewall Book Award for 'Sex
Variant Women in Literature'. She contributed fiction and reviews to
'The Ladder'. Foster lived to see her 1956 book hailed as a founding
document of a new area of scholarship. She was friends with Valerie
Taylor and Marie Kuda, who founded the first national lesbian writers'
conference in the United States. Taylor dedicated the first conference
in 1974 to Foster. In October 1974, after Foster was awarded the
Stonewall Book Award, Valerie Taylor published a tribute to her in the
Chicago Gay Crusader, underlining the importance of 'Sex Variant Women
in Literature' and describing it as a sourcebook not just for
homophile researchers but also for literature lovers, social trends
students, and those who fight for human liberation.

In 1998 Foster was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of
Fame.

In 2008, the first biography of Foster, 'Sex Variant Woman' by Joanne
Passet, was published.  In 2019, Foster was inducted into the Chicago
Literary Hall of Fame.


License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeannette_Howard_Foster