The lives of lesbians who grew up before 1965 remain cloaked in mystery. Historians have illuminated the worlds of upper-middle-class "romantic friends" and working-class butch and femme women who frequented lesbian bars in the ?50s and ?60s. The majority of lesbians, however, were lower-middle-class women who hid their sexual identity by engaging in discreet social and sexual relationships.

Drawing on correspondence, interviews, journals, and newspaper articles, Awfully Devoted Women offers a nuanced portrait of the lives of middle-class lesbians in the decades before the gay...