Love Stories: Sex between Men before Homosexuality - Hardcover

Katz, Jonathan Ned

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226426157 ISBN 13: 9780226426150

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2001

Synopsis

In Love Stories, Jonathan Ned Katz presents stories of men's intimacies with men during the nineteenth century—including those of Abraham Lincoln—drawing flesh-and-blood portraits of intimate friendships and the ways in which men struggled to name, define, and defend their sexual feelings for one another. In a world before "gay" and "straight" referred to sexuality, men like Walt Whitman and John Addington Symonds created new ways to name and conceive of their erotic relationships with other men. Katz, diving into history through diaries, letters, newspapers, and poems, offers us a clearer picture than ever before of how men navigated the uncharted territory of male-male desire.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Abraham Lincoln arrived in Springfield, Illinois, on April 15, 1837, and met Joshua Fry Speed, who offered the new legislator half of his double bed. The two shared that bed for more than three years, and Speed would later recall that "no two men were ever more intimate." The story of Lincoln's relationship with Speed, which opens this book, transports us into a forgotten world of love between men.

Jonathan Ned Katz presents stories of men's intimacies with men in the nineteenth century, tales with all the features of a good novel: engaging characters, moving conflicts, and surprising revelations. Katz draws flesh-and-blood portraits of these intimate friendships, tracing the way men struggled to name, define, and defend their deep feelings for one another. Some of these are love stories, some sex stories, some stories about love and sex. In a world before "gay" and "straight" referred to sexuality, men like Lincoln, Walt Whitman, John Addington Symonds, and James Mills Peirce created new, affirmative ways of naming and conceiving their intimacies with other men. Katz quotes diaries, letters, newspapers, and poems to offer glimpses into an uncharted territory of romance and eros.

Love Stories is an original and engaging take on sexual diversity over time. By this book's end its many chronicles coalesce into a beautiful portrait of the varieties of love and lust in another social world.

About the Author:

Love Stories is published on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Jonathan Ned Katz's first book on sexuality in society and time, the groundbreaking Gay American History (1976). He also authored Gay/Lesbian Almanac (1983), and The Invention of Heterosexuality (1995), among other books and articles.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0226426157
• ISBN 13: 9780226426150
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 426