Jeannette Howard Foster

Jeannette Howard Foster (November 3, 1895 - July 26, 1981) was a pioneering researcher in the field of lesbian literature. She pioneered the study of popular fiction and ephemera in order to excavate lesbian themes both overt and covert, and her years of pioneering data collection culminated in her 1956 study "Sex Variant Women in Literature", which has become a seminal resource in gay 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.

Born in Oak Park, Illinois, daughter of mechanical engineer Winslow Howard Foster (b. January 10, 1869) and Anna Mabel Burr, Foster earned a Ph.D. at the Graduate Library School of the University of Chicago. She taught library science at the Drexel Institute of Technology from 1937-1948. [Passet, Joanne (2008). "Sex variant woman : the life of Jeannette Howard Foster". Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.] She was librarian at the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University during the years 1948 to 1952 where she worked with Alfred Kinsey. She eventually retired to Pocahontas, Arkansas with two other women. [Hickman, Alan (2007)cite web|url=http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=1177|title=Gay & Lesbian Movement The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture.] Howard was the recipient of the 1974 Stonewall Book Award for "Sex Variant Women in Literature". [Carmichael, James (Winter 2000). "“They Sure Got to Prove It on Me”: Millennial Thoughts on Gay Archives, Gay Biography, and Gay Library History." "Libraries & Culture", 35 (1)]

She lived long enough to see her 1956 book hailed as a founding document of a new area of scholarship.

In 2008, the first biography of Foster, "Sex Variant Woman" by Holly Dolezalek, was published.

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