The Romantic Friendship Reader: Love Stories Between Men in Victorian America

While the Victorian period is often considered one of the most repressive and homophobic in American history, a literature of love between men actually flourished in the middle to late nineteenth century. Published by some of the most famous and respected writers of the day and popular with a wide audience of contemporary readers, many of these largely forgotten texts are now rediscovered in this provocative anthology of male romantic friendship fiction.

Comprising fifteen short stories, sketches, travel narratives, and novel extracts by such authors as Bayard Taylor, Bret Harte, Henry James, William Dean Howells, and Augusta Jane Evans Wilson, the volume casts new light on Victorian understandings of love, friendship, and eroticism. The collection both expands the canon of nineteenth-century American literature and offers a fresh context with which to view classic novels of the era, including Moby Dick and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Preceded by richly informative headnotes discussing the life and works of each author, the selections challenge the reader not only to reexamine nineteenth-century understandings of sexual mores and behaviors, but also to consider the striking differences between today's attitudes toward gender and sexuality and a time when men could openly express an unashamed, unselfconscious, all-consuming love for members of their own sex.