Male Homosexuality in Children’s Literature, 1867–1918: The Young Uranians

Description

In his 1908 cultural and historical study of homosexuality titled The Intersexes: A History of Similisexualism as a Problem in Social Life (1908), Edward Irenæus Prime-Stevenson includes a section on homosexual juvenile fiction, perhaps the first attempt to identify a body of children’s literature about male homosexuality in English. Known for pioneering the explicitly gay American novel for adults, Stevenson was also one of the first thinkers to take seriously the possibility and value of homosexual children, whom he called "young Uranians." This book takes as its starting point Stevenson’s catalog of homosexual boy books around the turn of the century and offers a critical examination of these works, along with others by gay writers who wrote for children from the mid-nineteenth century through the end of World War I. Stevenson’s list includes Eduard Bertz, Howard Sturgis, Horace Vachell, and Stevenson himself—to which Horatio Alger, John Gambril Nicholson, and E.F. Benson are added. Read alongside major developments in English- and German-language sexology, these boy books can be understood as participating in the construction and dissemination of the discourse of sexuality and as constituting the figure of the young Uranian as central to modern gay identity. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Uncovering the Early History of Gay Children’s Literature Edward Prime-Stevenson, Uranianism, and Homosexuality The Early History of Gay Children’s Literature The Case of Bayard’s Taylor’s Boys of Other Countries Sexology and the History of Sexuality Foucault and the Use of the Child The Past’s Hope in the Future Notes Works Cited Chapter 1: New York City and the Proto-Uranian Street Boys of Alger’s Ragged Dick Series Same-sex Friendship and the Alger Myth Same-sex Relations and the Survival of Street Boys Same-sex Friendship and Survival in the Ragged Dick Series Cruising the City Exoneration Narratives and the Proto-Uranian Boy Conclusion: Alger’s City Boys and the Path to Gay Identity Notes Works Cited Chapter 2: Boys as Noble Uranians: Eduard Bertz’s The French Prisoners and the Discourse of Sexology Bertz on Homosexuality German Sexology and the Homosexual Emancipation Movement The French Prisoners as a Homosexual Boys’ Novel Conclusions: Searching for Utopia Notes Works Cited Chapter 3: Suicide, Self-Sacrifice, and Uranian Schoolboys in Howard Sturgis’s Tim and Horace Vachell’s The Hill Same-sex Friendship and Love in Boys’ School Fiction Homosexuality in English Public Schools Uranian Boyhood, School Friendships, and the Threat of Suicide Uranianism and Self-Sacrifice in Tim Rivalry and Self-Sacrifice in The Hill Conclusion: Uranian Psychology in Boyhood Notes Works Cited Chapter 4: Between Boys: Coding Young Uranians in Edward Prime-Stevenson’s Left to Themselves and White Cockades Boyhood Sexuality and Stevenson’s Boy Books White Cockades : The Bonnie Prince in the Closet Blackmail and the Homosexual Ethos of Left to Themselves Coding the Closet in Left to Themselves Conclusion: Boys as Messengers and the Possibilities of Gay Children’s Literature Notes Works Cited Chapter 5: The Adult Tutor and the Young Uranian: Greek Love in John Gambril Nicholson’s In Carrington’s Duty-Week and The Romance of a Choir Boy Nicholson and the “Uranian” Poets Greek Love and Turn-of-the-Century Sexology “Cliffe School” and the Dangers of Sexual Vice The Schoolmaster as Homosexual Mentor Chaste and Unchaste Love between Men and Boys Conclusion: The Child Is the Savior of the Man Notes Works Cited Chapter 6: E.F. Benson’s David Blaize Books and Boys as the “Third Sex” Benson and Homosexuality Benson’s Adolescent Boys and the Third Sex Model Sexology and Child Sexuality Child Sexuality in David Blaize Child Sexuality in David Blaize and the Blue Door Conclusion: Benson, Prudishness, and the Pleasures of Uranian Youth Notes Works Cited Conclusion: “The Future May be Trusted to Decide”: Boy Books and the Possibilities of Gay Children’s Literature Notes Works Cited Index