For a long time English print could not say the word without becoming evidence. So it developed a dialect: “unnatural,” “Greek,” “musical,” “that sin,” “the love that dare not speak its name” (Lord Alfred Douglas, 1894 — Wilde’s trial made the line famous). Reading that dialect is a historical skill. Shakespeare’s sonnets, Marlowe’s rumors, Rochester’s obscenity, Whitman, Dickinson’s intensity, Proust’s Sodom and Gomorrah volume, Baldwin, Genet — they do not form a team. They form a problem: how to represent desire the law had already claimed.
The 20th century split. Some books went to court (Ulysses, Lady Chatterley, the cheap paperbacks in the 1950s postal cases). Some went to the underground. After decriminalization, the literary job changed from evasion to memory: what did it feel like when the word was still a charge? Chauncey’s Gay New York is history; the novels are the weather.
We will keep a running shelf, not a fake comprehensive canon. Suggestions belong on the contact form. If your list is only Wilde and a wink, it is not a list yet.