My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries
Important letters by Marsilio Ficino, Federico Gonzaga, Henrich
von Kleist, Charles-Victor de Bonstetten, Johannes von Muller,
Johann Joachim Winckelmann, and Jean Cocteau have been specialy
translated for this anthology.
Some of the letters come from books proudly published by their
writers and some have been published in newspapers and pamphlets
as part of political and religious attacks; some come from court
records (from the Inquisition to the Old Bailey) and some were
discovered in a cardboard box after a house clearance; many have
narrowly escaped censorship and suppression.
This richly diverse collection of letters illustrates the basic
theme of romantic love: infatuation, longing, sex, separation,
the fear of rejection, jealousy, the joy of reunion, celebration,
and debates about "marriage" and "infidelity" in gay
relationships. Whether the affairs were stormy or tender, they
are, above all, testimonials to an enduring love.
A full introduction charts the survival of gay love letters
throughout history, and each selection is introduced with a
biographical note describing the context in which the letters
were written. Illustrated with more than two dozen photographs.
About the Book
My Dear Boy is an anthology of gay
love letters documenting the heartbreak and joy of love between
men for almost two thousand years. Emperor Marcus Arelius, Bo
Juyi, Saint Anselm, Erasmus, Michelangelo, Mashida Toyonoshin,
Thomas Gray, William Beckford, Walt Whitman, Tchaikovsky, Henry
James, Countee Cullen, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg are
just a few of the correspondents included, who range from kings
and aristocrats, musicians and artists, military men and monks,
to farm labourers and herring merchants, political activists and
aesthetes, black poets and Japanese actors, drag queens and
hustlers.
About the Author
RICTOR NORTON is the author of the pioneering historical study
Mother Clap's Molly House: The
Gay Subculture in England 1700-1830 (1992). He
taught one of the earliest courses on gay and lesbian literature
(Florida State University, 1971) and co-edited the first all-gay
issue of an academic journal (College
English, 1974). His book The Homosexual
Literary Tradition (1973) was based on his Ph.D.
study of homosexual themes in English Renaissance literature. He
then emigrated to London and worked full-time at the fortnightly
newspaper Gay News from 1974 to 1979.
Many of Rictor Norton's essays for Gay
Sunshine on gay history and literature were
reprinted in Gay Roots, vols. I &
II (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1991, 1993). He is a
contributor to the New Dictionary of National
Biography. His most recent book is The Myth of the Modern Homosexual: Queer
History and the Search for Cultural Unity
(1997). He lives in London.