Mary Renault

MR , who published her first book in 1939, is best known for her historical novels, and is also noted for her strong interest in same-sex love. In her present-day novels, a large proportion of characters have sexually-ambiguous names which reflect the ambivalence of their orientations. Biographer David Sweetman claims that her historical novels helped many people to come to terms with their sexuality, giving lesbians and male homosexuals a historical past while offering non-homosexuals a sympathetic world where heterosexuality was neither the only, nor the dominant, sexual type.MR 's writing has been acclaimed by critics past and present: Bernard Dick has called her one of the most creative historical novelists of our era and the only bona fide Hellenist in twentieth-century fiction. Aside from her fiction, MR wrote several short stories, articles, and introductions.