Gay icon a prototypical portrait of a tortured closet case." Due to Saint Sebastian's status as a gay icon, Tennessee Williams chose to use the saint's name for the martyred character Sebastian in his play, "Suddenly, Last Summer". The name was also used by Oscar Wilde—as Sebastian Melmoth—when in exile after his release from prison. Wilde, an Irish writer and poet, was about as "out of the closet" as was possible for the late 19th century, and is himself considered to be a gay icon. Marie Antoinette was an early lesbian icon. Rumors about her relationships with women circulated in pornographic detail
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight pen name V. Sirin, and shares with them a preoccupation with the problems of living in exile and of adaptation. This, Nabokov’s first novel under his own name, was published by New Directions Publishers in 1941 and sold slowly. After the success of "Lolita" it was republished in 1959, this time to wide critical acclaim. The narrator, V., is absorbed in the composition of his first literary work, a biography of his half-brother, the Russian-born English novelist, Sebastian Knight (1899–1936). In the course of his quest he tracks down Sebastian's contemporaries at Cambridge and interviews other friends and acquaintances. In