Rita Mae Brown’s groundbreaking book, Rubyfruit Jungle, may well be the most widely read lesbian novel ever written. Published in 1973, the book was embraced by the lesbian-feminist movement, of which Brown was a key figure.

Brown was born November 28, 1944, in Hanover, Pa., and was put up for adoption by her unwed teenage mother. When she was about 11, Brown and her adoptive family moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where, at age 16, she had her first sexual experience with a girlfriend from school. In 1964, as a student at the University of Florida, Brown had her scholarship revoked for taking part in civil-rights activism, and she was forced to leave school. She later hitchhiked to New York City, where she briefly lived in an abandoned car in Greenwich Village.

While attending New York University in 1968, Brown started the second-ever chapter of the Student Homophile League, which had been founded the year before at Columbia. She claimed to be "one of two women, I expect" who participated in the June 1969 Stonewall Riots. Brown also joined the then-new National Organization for Women (NOW), challenging the group by openly declaring her lesbianism.

Soon, though, Brown grew tired of both the male dominance of the new gay liberation organizations and the heterosexism of the incipient women’s movement, and began to focus on lesbian-specific activism. She was a founding member in 1970 of Radicalesbians—originally named the Lavender Menace after a negative comment about lesbians in the women’s movement by NOW founder Betty Friedan—and co-authored the group’s manifesto, "The Woman-Identified Woman." At the Second Congress to Unite Women in May 1970, Brown and about 20 other lesbian activists carried out a visibility action, in which they wore "Lavender Menace" T-shirts and carried signs bearing slogans such as "We are your worst nightmare, your best fantasy." The following year, NOW voted overwhelmingly to include lesbian concerns in its platform.

After moving to Washington, D.C., to continue graduate school, Brown co-founded the Furies, a lesbian separatist collective. Calling for an autonomous lesbian-feminist movement, she declared that the difference between heterosexual women and lesbians was "the difference between reform and revolution."

Brown achieved her greatest fame when, in 1973, she published her groundbreaking debut novel, Rubyfruit Jungle, the title of which refers to women’s genitals. The book tells the story of Molly Bolt, whose life mirrors Brown’s in many respects. Molly also was adopted and grew up in the South. Independent, strong-willed, and unapologetically lesbian, Molly has affairs with a sixth-grade classmate, the head cheerleader in high school, and an alcoholic heiress roommate in college, which leads to Molly’s expulsion from school and rejection by her mother. Molly then hitchhikes to New York City, penniless, hoping to become a famous filmmaker. There, she has a series of (often improbable) affairs and adventures before finally leaving to seek her fortune in California.

Rubyfruit Jungle is regarded as a prime example of a "picaresque" novel, which follows the adventures of a down-and-out protagonist who learns life’s lessons and makes good. Donna Shalala, former Secretary of Health and Human Services, is among the many that have compared Brown’s book to Mark Twain’s works: "Molly Bolt is a genuine descendant—genuine female descendant—of Huckleberry Finn. And Rita Mae Brown is, like Mark Twain, a serious writer who gets her messages across through laughter." Rubyfruit Jungle was unique in being the first such novel that both had a female subject and was written by a woman. Today, the novel is a staple of both gay and lesbian studies and literature classes.

Brown’s book was among the earliest works to reflect the sensibilities of the burgeoning lesbian-feminist community of the early 1970s. It also broke ground as one of the first novels to feature a happy, unapologetic lesbian protagonist—unlike the tradition of lesbian novels, such as Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, in which the lesbian was typically portrayed as a tragic figure who often died by the end of the book, or at least lost her girl to a man.

After every major New York publishing house rejected Rubyfruit Jungle, it was finally published by Daughters, a small independent women’s press co-founded by June Arnold, another pioneering lesbian writer. Even without reviews in mainstream newspapers and magazines or the publicity afforded by a large publisher, the novel proved highly popular; its success brought attention to feminist presses and helped inspire an outpouring of new lesbian literature. In 1977, Bantam Books purchased rights to the novel, and it has remained in print ever since.

Rubyfruit Jungle afforded Brown considerable acclaim, allowing her to make a living as a writer. "Rubyfruit Jungle brought me notoriety, a ton of hate mail, numerous threats on my life including two bomb threats, increased outrage from the conservative wing of the feminist movement, and scorn from the radical dykes," she wrote in her 1997 autobiography. "Straight people were mad because I was gay. The dykes were mad because I wasn’t gay enough."

As the lesbian-feminist movement began to fall apart due to internal conflicts in the late 1970s, Brown moved to Los Angeles, where she worked as a screenwriter for film and television (her credits include The Slumber Party Massacre and the lesbian-themed TV movie My Two Loves). Her celebrity grew when she began a three-year relationship with tennis star Martina Navratilova in 1979. Navratilova went on to a long-term relationship with Judy Nelson, who filed a palimony suit when they split up; Brown then had an affair with Nelson. Among Brown’s other relationships was one with actress and author Fannie Flagg.

Brown—an avid animal lover—remained a prolific writer, and in the 1990s "co-authored" a series of mystery novels with her cat Sneaky Pie. But none of her subsequent works achieved the popularity of Rubyfruit Jungle, which remains one of the best-selling lesbian novels of all time.