Are girls necessary?'' asks Julie Abraham in this provocative study of 20th-century lesbian writing. Examining the development of lesbian writing in English across the 20th Century, Abraham identifies a shift from this ``romance'' model to a more complicated ``history'' model. The great modernists, Woolf and Stein, as well as the popular writers of succeeding generations, like Mary Renault, looked to historical narratives, creating an important change in the way the ``lesbian story'' is built. The possibilities in lesbian writing, from the early romance plots through to the post-1960s liberation movement experiments, are Abraham's geography. Within it, she offers detailed readings of major writers in several genres, from high modern to pulp, both British and American.