Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century

Rating:
Summary: Strangers
Review: An interesting and worthwhile study, this book didn't really tell me what I wanted to know, but perhaps that's an inevitable result of the nature of the available historical sources.

Robb focuses heavily on elite writing and art for his evidence --these apparently being the most readily available sources -- and because of that, the reader looks in vain for a clear picture of how an average homosexual person in the 19th century might have experienced life. I was hoping the book would help me build the mentality of a character who lives in 1876 Galveston, but in vain. Perhaps it is not possible to get such a clear picture from the available evidence.

It may also be worth pointing out that the sources used by Robb are heavily weighted toward the end of the 19th century, the turn of the century and the early 20th century, and tend to focus on Europe.

Having said that the book didn't give me what I was hoping for, I still found it interesting and worth reading. Robb adequately proves his main thesis, which is that a significant body of thought portraying same-sex relations as healthy, normal and praiseworthy was available to at least some individuals in the late 19th century.

Rating:
Summary: "Curious fragments from a vanished civilization"
Review: Graham Robb has probably written one of the most comprehensive, authoritative and commanding accounts of homosexual love ever. Academic, inclusive, and wide-ranging, Strangers, is at once, entertaining, but also incredibly enlightening, as Robb effectively succeeds in dispelling many of the myths associated with Victorian sexual mores. His findings on gay love in the nineteenth century are quite surprising. Victorian attitudes towards homosexuality were in many respects relatively enlightened, especially in comparison to the early twentieth century. Also, the gay community found ways to thrive, and in many European cities, truly blossom and flourish. Homosexuals, or "inverts," "sodomites," "uranians," and "pederasts" as they were called, not only had thriving meeting places, but also were able to develop whole networks and communities through the subtle bourgeoning of art, music and the written word.

Robb tackles the obstacles gay love encountered and the societies it created by talking about the criminal statistics of the period. He explains the laws that existed against sodomy in various countries, and the efforts of the police force, particularly in England to stamp out any "unnatural lewdness, and "immoral acts." Robb then juxtaposes the nineteenth century with the twentieth century and the eventual "medicalization" of homosexuality. Homosexuality didn't become such a vitriolic and contentious an issue until the beginning of the twentieth century when medical and psychological views of it began to became fashionable. In the twentieth century, homosexuality began to be studied as a condition, something to be treated and perhaps cured, therefore certain diagnostic, analytical and investigative processes were attached to it.

Much of the book debunks the myths surrounding homosexual society during this century. There was, in actuality, a highly politicized sense of sexual rights, a calendar of events and anniversaries, social clubs with international links, cafes and brothels and well-established cruising grounds with organized patrols. This well organized network allowed gays to communicate with one another almost throughout the whole of Europe. There's also an interesting chapter on homosexuality in literature, where Robb analyses many of the works of some of the most famously known gay writers. He also examines the hidden gay meaning behind some of the fairytales of Hans Christian Andersen, who is described as "humiliated, effeminate youth."

Throughout he narrative, Robb talks of Karl Heinrich Ulrich, the only known gay man to actually "come out" in the nineteenth century, Oscar Wilde, and his subsequent prosecution for indecency, and the German doctor Magnus Hirschfeld, who thought he could tell a homosexual by the direction a thread will swing when tied around the right index finger. Homosexuals known to be "out" are also mentioned, such as the Ladies of Llangollen, Sarah Ponsonby and Lady Eleanor Butler - two lesbians living in recluse in Wales, Anne Lister - a famous society lesbian of Shibden Hall, and Frederick "Fanny" Park and Ernest "Stella Boulton, two much loved effeminate music hall artists.

The reader will also find fascinating the comprehensive appendices, which give some interesting criminal statistics on indictments for sodomy and related offences in England, Wales and the United States. There's also a riotous questionnaire based on an original by Magnus Hirschfeld, which was supposed to help readers decide whether or not they were homosexual. Strangers, is not an easy read - Robb does at times, bombard the reader with a few too many names, dates and citations, which some readers may find a little overwhelming. Generally, though, Strangers is a fascinating social history of a little known world that once thrived and was, in its own way, immensely prosperous and successful. Mike Leonard June 04.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting and informative
Review: I found this book a very enjoyable and enlightening read. It corrected assumptions I'd made in the past in reading about Victorian England. Statistics in the early chapter were a little dry but necessary, and tempered by excerpts from old letters and diaries, which were touching and added a poignant humanity. I also wanted to mention that I enjoyed Mr. Robb's newspaper article in the Houston Chronicle recently. I wrote a letter to the editor about the article but I don't believe my letter was published in the paper, so I wanted to say here that it was an excellent article and I'm glad Mr. Robb took the time to bring the ideas in his excellent book to a wider audience. I hope it increased his book sales and I hope we will see more articles like it in the future.

Rating:
Summary: a history book for the gay community
Review: i want to start off with what i like about this book. i like the fact that this book serves as a notice or a reference material for the gay community. there are far to many people who do not understand the history of homosexuality through the ages. this book really covers topics that exist in all parts of the world. the book really delves into the past and unearths some great information about what the gay forefathers and mothers went through in the nineteenth century. robbs throws a lot of names around in order to show the reader that homosexuality is not just relegated to ordinary people but to famous ones as well. this is a great book that can educate people both gay and straight about the trials and triumphs of the gay community....

what i did not like about this book is the way it was written. although i find the book interesting i often use it to help me fall asleep. it reads like a textbook. i almost thought i was reading a book for a history class. that is the hitch to this book, i liked it but i could also put it down. i feel that this book could have been broken up more into chapters rather than page after page after page of the same chapter. personally i need a stopping point and there are not many in this book. perhaps if the chapters had been more succinct the book would read a little faster and not so much like a text book.

i really think that this book has a lot to offer and i dont think that my personal pickiness shoud discourage anyone from reading sucha ground-breaking book.

Rating:
Summary: Another wonderful book from Graham Robb
Review: Over the past few years, I've had the opportunity to read Graham Robb's wonderful biographies of Hugo, Balzac and Rimbaud, and in the process of reading them, I discovered that Robb had become one of my favorite writers. Therefore, I approached "Strangers" with high hopes.

And I was not disappointed! What a marvelous book this is! Unlike many works of gay history, which are top-heavy with pretentious academic theory, this book is filled with original research and fascinating stories. For example, the first chapter does something never done before: it explores the arrest records of homosexuals from 1830 through the late twentieth century. It also presents the data in easy-to-read chart form.

What you realize, while taking this all in, is that other academics have presented partial looks at this data, with huge theories to explain tiny data-sets. Robb simply reads and presents all of the data, which make one thing very very obvious: it was much better to be gay in Victorian England than in 1950's America (or England)!

Now, this one discovery, all by itself, would be enough to make the reputation of a small flock of our current academic midgets. Imagine! We all thought of Victorian England as absolute hell for gay people, and -- it wasn't!! No, the move into the 20th century, and the "medicalization" of the "problem," and then the horrible totalitarian movements like the Nazis and the Communists -- all of this somehow worked together to create an atmosphere which was extremely brutal towards gay people -- brutal enough, perhaps, to create its own revolution at Stonewall.

And this is only the first chapter of "Strangers!" Robb goes on to discuss the "product conversion" in fascinating detail, and manages to get the story of the early German liberation movement right (no minor task) and to make it just as fascinating as everything else in this book. Along the way, he gently and wittily disposes of some of the more ludicrous ideas circulating among the academics (e.g. the idea that homosexuals came into existence in 1875).

You will also greatly enjoy the chapters on Jesus and Sherlock Holmes. This book belongs in the library of every person interested in gay history.

Highest possible recommendation!!

Rating:
Summary: A Thoroughly Satisfying Book by a Genuine Original Thinker!
Review: STRANGERS: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century as written with consummate skill and wit by Graham Robb is a fascinating insight about the history of homosexuality through the ages. Though particularly addressing the 19th Century, uncovering letters, notes, books, and facts vs. fiction by some of the more luminous writers and thinkers of that time, Robb takes multiple asides to Greece, the Middle Ages, and the centuries before his chosen example, allowing us to realize that Gay Rights Movements did NOT start in 1969 with Stonewall. His exploration of pan-sexuality includes the Church and spirituality in general, Medicine, Psychology, the fraternities and sororities, the balls and brothels, and private lives of Henry James, da Vinci, Ludwig II of Bavaria, Gide, Alexander the Great, Marcel Proust, Walt Whitman, Lord Byron, Shelley, Oscar Wilde et al, Michelangelo etc without ever becoming just a book of gossip. Quite the contrary, this is serious literature, albeit written in an often hilarious tongue-in-cheek mode. Robb's main purpose seems to establish the fact that `homosexuality' has been around and popular for far longer than the historians, sociologists and physicians believe would have us believe: it is not a discovery dating to Kraft-Ebbing, Freud, or Hirschfield. Read it for history, read it for stories about people you venerate, read it for historical information, read it as elegant prose, but by all means read this immensely successful book!



Rating:
Summary: An eye-opener
Review: This book is an eye-opener, and it is a rich, well-written, masterful piece of cultural history. It also clears up a lot of misconceptions, both about gay history and about the Victorian era. Robb does not write boringly or dully, does not get bogged down in minutiae, does not accept received wisdom at face value, does not pander to constituencies or trends, and most of all, does not make the frequent error of succumbing to anachronistic condescension toward the period he is writing about. I finished the book with a new appreciation of a period of time in which the conventional thinking leads us to believe that, other than the tragic figure of Oscar Wilde (who does not escape Robb's cliche-busting), nothing and nobody of significance that would later fit into the rubric of "gay" existed -- or mattered (or if they did, they were pathetic, unhappy, and suicidal). Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, for instance, usually merits only a footnote in most historical accounts. Here he is full-blooded and well-drawn.

Rating:
Summary: Joyful wisdom
Review: This is a terrific piece of social history, wide-ranging, smart, fair-minded and thoroughly entertaining. Too much gay history is two parts theory to one part story, but Graham Robb has distilled the past thirty years of research by various historians into a wonderful concentrate of stories. (Yet, he's an incredibly generous reader other people. He corrects and improves on Michael Foucault and others without ever trashing them.)

The book is full of great characters: Anne Lister, Magnus Hirshfeld, Karl Ulrichs, and the anonymous man who wrote to the author of an early gay menace-type study to thank him for letting him know he was not alone, even if he did use the word "repulsive" a few too many times. This is a witty book, whether it's dealing with the medical claim that gay men have corkscrew-shaped penises ("for reasons easy to imagine") or John Maynard Keynes's personal list of sex partners from 1906 ("the chemist's boy of Paris; the clergyman; David Erskine, MP") or offering Sherlock Holmes as a gay hero.

Robb does a terrific job of establishing continuities with our age as well as identifying differences. He never condescends to the past, and he doesn't trivialize the present. The book clears away the half-baked theories that have gathered around the subject like cobwebs in recent years, but, more important, it's a joy to read.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent study of a complex topic
Review: What a pleasure it is to read Graham Robb's new book! Much of what has been written about "homosexuality before the term existed" has been based on speculation and theorizing. Robb, as someone devoted to 19th-century literature, seems to genuinely understand the mindset of the time, and then has actually done research (now there's a concept!) that helps to back up his ideas with factual information. His book is therefore remarkably free of cant, and presents material for the reader to draw his or her own conclusions, rather than trying to hammer home his own pet speculation. Robb provides a solid overview of the "medical" approach, the amazingly diverse terminology (Uranians, inverts, etc.), as well as insights into writers as diverse as Oscar Wilde and Hans Christian Anderson. (...)

Rating:
Summary: An excellent study of a complex topic
Review: What a pleasure it is to read Graham Robb's new book! Much of what has been written about "homosexuality before the term existed" has been based on speculation and theorizing. Robb, as someone devoted to 19th-century literature, seems to genuinely understand the mindset of the time, and then has actually done research (now there's a concept!) that helps to back up his ideas with factual information. His book is therefore remarkably free of cant, and presents material for the reader to draw his or her own conclusions, rather than trying to hammer home his own pet speculation. Robb provides a solid overview of the "medical" approach, the amazingly diverse terminology (Uranians, inverts, etc.), as well as insights into writers as diverse as Oscar Wilde and Hans Christian Anderson. (...)