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In its first century of
existence, Gay
Male Autobiography has become increasingly open, frank, and
unapologetic. Gay autobiography has inspired solidarity because it
emphasizes both the uniqueness and the commonalities of the coming out
experience, as well as the peculiarities and the mundanities of gay lives. |
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Edward Carpenter |
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J. R. Ackerley
(1896-1967)
was a twentieth-century British editor who fostered the careers of a
number of important gay writers. He also wrote a small but significant
body of gay literature that includes memoirs and drama. |
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AIDS Literature
comprises a large body of often autobiographical works, most written by
gay men. Much of AIDS literature is designed to expose readers as
closely as possible to the emergency of the epidemic. |
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Edward Carpenter
(1844-1929)
was a champion of both women's and homosexuals' liberation and was one
of the great socialist visionaries of England at the turn of the
twentieth century. His autobiography, My Days and Dreams,
appeared in 1916. |
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Coming Out Stories and the coming
out experience are so important to gay men and lesbians that coming out
is a primary focus of much queer literature. |
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Quentin Crisp (1908-1999),
an
actor, writer, performance artist, and wit, described himself as "one
of the stately homos of England." He became a celebrity as a result of
his extraordinary autobiography, The Naked Civil Servant (1968). |
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Mark Doty
(b. 1953) is a poet and memoirist who has
helped bring the AIDS narrative and the experiences of gay men to a
wider audience. |
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Henry Havelock
Ellis (1859-1939) was a British psychologist and writer and one of
the first modern thinkers to challenge Victorian taboos against the
frank discussion of sex. The case studies in Ellis' book Sexual
Inversion provided one of the earliest opportunities for homosexuals
to describe their own
lives in print. |
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 Christopher
Isherwood (1904-1986) was a major Anglo-American novelist
and a pioneer in the gay liberation movement. He revealed his
homosexuality in his 1971 biography of his parents and explored it
further in his autobiography in 1976. |
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 Richard
von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902) was a physician and the author of
Psychopathia Sexualis, an influential treatise on sexual
variations. The book's carefully detailed case studies shed light
on a wide spectrum of sexual habits among men and women. |
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Paul Monette
(1945-1995) wrote novels, poetry, and memoirs about gay men striving
to fashion personal identities and, later, coping with the loss of a
lover to AIDS. |
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Ned Rorem
(b. 1923) is
one of the most accomplished and prolific composers of art songs in the
world. His diaries and essays offer elegant and erudite analyses of aesthetic
questions and are candid about his life in the gay cultural fast lane. |
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Sir Stephen
Spender (1909-1995) was an English writer, teacher, and
translator who wrote about his homosexual experiences in his poems and
his autobiography. |
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 John
Addington Symonds (1840-1893) was the most daring
innovator in the history of nineteenth-century British homosexual
writing and consciousness, though his
autobiography remained unpublished until 1984. |
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 Karl
Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895) was a nineteenth-century German
activist, writer, and scholar. He was the first modern theorist of
homosexuality and the first homosexual to "come out" publicly. |
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 Oscar Wilde
(1854-1900) is
important both as an accomplished writer and as a symbolic figure. His
autobiographical De Profundis is Wilde's most important
contribution to gay literature. |
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Photo
Credits: Images of Edward Carpenter, Christopher Isherwood,
and John Addington Symonds courtesy Library of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division. The image of Christopher Isherwood is a
detail from a portrait by Carl van Vechten. The images of Richard
von Krafft-Ebing and Karl Heinrich Ulrichs courtesy Archiv
für Sexualwissenschaft, Berlin. The image of Oscar Wilde courtesy
Archive und Bibliothek des Schwulen Museums, Berlin. |
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