Boston Bohemia, 1881-1900: Ralph Adams Cram Life and Literature

Rating:
Summary: Excellent history!
Review: I am very impressed with this book. It is long and detailed but it is chock full of incredibly interesting facts and details of the intertwinings of the gay community, the Anglo-Catholic movement in Boston, architecture and Boston history. I believe this book should be a "cannon" of gay literature and history but it seems to be overlooked. The author's research is incredibly detailed and and exhaustive.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent history!
Review: I am very impressed with this book. It is long and detailed but it is chock full of incredibly interesting facts and details of the intertwinings of the gay community, the Anglo-Catholic movement in Boston, architecture and Boston history. I believe this book should be a "cannon" of gay literature and history but it seems to be overlooked. The author's research is incredibly detailed and and exhaustive.

Rating:
Summary: Worth the read if you can get through it
Review: This sprawling study, which combines elements of cultural history, architecture criticism, gay gossip, and religious iconography, explores a wide range of the poets, art lovers, and fashionable people living in Boston at the end of the 19th century. The central figure, church architect Ralph Adams Cram, a devout Anglo-Catholic and apostle of Gothic Revivalism, launched an assault on Massachusetts Puritanism that resonates in our own times. Shand-Tucci provides an intersting backdrop for Adams--the rarefied atmosphere of Harvard-dominated Boston and the entrenched gay subculture of Boston's North End. Forgotten artists such as poet Louise Imogen Guiney and better-known figures such as George Santayana make important appearances here. Cram's romance/partnership with architect Bertram Goodhue is explored (albeit rather obliquely). Shand-Tucci is at his best when exploring the roots of Cram's religious fervor and when profiling eccentric art patrons such as Isabella Stewart Gardner.

I do wish Shand-Tucci's prose were less effusive. The rib-nudging, campy asides to the reader are wearying, and the profusion of exclamation points must break all records. I finally got through it all, however, and I look forward to Volume Two.