Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century

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W. W. Norton & Company, 2004 - History - 341 pages
A sweeping and compelling history of homosexuality in the nineteenth century, taking in both Europe and America. The three part work is divided up by theme. The first part deals with the treatment of homosexuals, both male and female, by the rest of society - from doctors to law-makers and mothers. Part two describes the lives and loves of gay men and women, and the beginnings of the early gay rights movement. And in the last part Robb writes on crucial aspects of gay culture, from high-brow to pornographic, from religious obssession to modern gay icons. This is not a sorry tale of prejudice and persecution. Rather, it is one of surprising tolerance, humour and entertainment; of a century that was almost a 'golden age' for gay culture. All is written with Robb's characteristic brilliance, balance and insight. It is a history for all readers of non-fiction, not for gay readers alone, emphasizing as it does the fruitful part that homosexuality has always played in our modern society.
 

Contents

PREJUDICE
1
PART ONE
15
IN THE SHADOWS
17
COUNTRY OF THE BLIND
40
OUTINGS
84
PART TWO
123
MIRACULOUS LOVE
125
SOCIETY OF STRANGERS
156
GENTLE JESUS
229
HEROES OF MODERN LIFE
249
APPENDICES
267
I Criminal Statistics
268
II A Categoric Personal Analysis for the Reader
272
III Map of Uranian Europe
274
Acknowledgements
276
NOTES
277

A SEX OF ONES OWN
174
PART THREE
191
FAIRY TALES
193
WORKS CITED
303
INDEX
328
Copyright

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About the author (2004)

Best-selling author Graham Robb was born in Manchester in 1958 and is a former Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He is an acclaimed historian and biographer, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has won the Whitbread Biography Prize and the Heinemann Award for Victor Hugo, as well as the Ondaatje Prize and Duff Cooper Prize for The Discovery of France. His book Parisians was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller. He lives on the Anglo-Scottish border.

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