Refuting commonly held beliefs within women's and lesbian history, feminist theory, and histories of the novel, this book challenges the idea that sex between women was unimaginable in British culture before the late nineteenth century.It is of interest to readers engaged in literary and queer theory.

Moore also examines representations of sapphism through the sweeping economic and political changes of the period and claims that middle-class readers' identifications with the heroine's virtue helped the novel's bourgeois audience justify the violent bases of their new prosperity, including slavery, colonialism, and bloody national rivalry. In revealing the struggle over sapphism at the heart of these novels of female friendship - and at the heart of England's national identity - Moore shows how feminine sexual agency emerged as an important cultural force in post-Enlightenment England. Of particular interest to readers engaged in literary and queer theory, "Dangerous Intimacies" will also appeal to students and scholars of the novel, eighteenth-century studies, and postcolonial studies.