Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth CenturyThe nineteenth century was a golden age for those people known variously as sodomites, Uranians, monosexuals, and homosexuals. Long before Stonewall and Gay Pride, there was such a thing as gay culture, and it was recognized throughout Europe and America. Graham Robb, brilliant biographer of Balzac, Hugo, and Rimbaud, examines how homosexuals were treated by society and finds a tale of surprising tolerance. He describes the lives of gay men and women: how they discovered their sexuality and accepted or disguised it; how they came out; how they made contact with like-minded people. He also includes a fascinating investigation of the encrypted homosexuality of such famous nineteenth-century sleuths as Edgar Allan Poe's Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes himself (with glances forward in time to Batman and J. Edgar Hoover). Finally, Strangers addresses crucial questions of gay culture, including the riddle of its relationship to religion: Why were homosexuals created with feelings that the Creator supposedly condemns? This is a landmark work, full of tolerant wisdom, fresh research, and surprises. |
Contents
PREJUDICE | 1 |
IN THE SHADOWS | 17 |
COUNTRY OF THE BLIND | 40 |
OUTINGS | 84 |
MIRACULOUS LOVE | 125 |
SOCIETY OF STRANGERS | 156 |
A SEX OF ONES OWN | 174 |
FAIRY TALES | 197 |
APPENDICES | 271 |
Criminal Statistics | 272 |
A Categoric Personal Analysis for the Reader | 276 |
Map of Uranian Europe | 278 |
Acknowledgements | 280 |
NOTES | 281 |
WORKS CITED | 307 |
332 | |
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19th century Albert Moll androgyne Anne Lister appeared arrested Balzac beautiful behaviour Berlin brothels buggery called cent Champs-Élysées Christ Christian crime criminal culture cure Custine death described detective doctors Dupin Earl Lind early Edward Edward Carpenter Ellis England evidence feelings female French friendship German Greek happy Havelock Havelock Ellis heterosexual Hirschfeld Holmes homo homosexual homosexual love idea indecency inverts J. A. Symonds Jesus Karl Heinrich Ulrichs Katz kiss Krafft-Ebing Ladies later lesbian letters literature lives London look lover Magnus Hirschfeld male marriage modern Moll moral Müller nature never normal notion novels offences Oscar Wilde paragraph 175 Paris passion patients pederasts perversion Platen poems police popular Prime-Stevenson prosecutions prostitutes published readers secret seems sexual social society sodomy strangers Street Symonds theory thought transvestism trials tribades unnatural Uranian Uranists Victorian Westphal Whitman woman women writers young