Queer Lives - by William A Peniston & Nancy Erber (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Eight gay men wrote their autobiographies in French between 1845 and 1905; some of them reflected on their childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, others provided brief impressions of their loves and desires. A few of them dramatized their lives following contemporary theatrical and fictional models, while others wrote for medical doctors, who used the men's writings as case studies to illustrate their theories on sexual deviance. In some instances the doctors' extensive interpretations cannot be separated from the men's own stories, but in others the authors speak for themselves. The remarkable autobiographies in Queer Lives, translated into English for the first time here, give present-day readers a rare glimpse into otherwise shrouded existences. They relate the experiences of a man about town, a cross-dressing entertainer, a troubled adolescent, and two fetishists, among others. The autobiographies will interest a wide audience today at a time when readers are seeking new views on the lives of ordinary men and women from the past, when gay people are looking for the roots of their communities, and when scholars are trying to understand the formation of sexual identities at a crucial moment in the history of modern Europe.

Review Quotes

"A welcome addition to our understanding of nineteenth-century European sexualities."--Scott E. Gunther, H-France

"Reading Queer Lives is to experience vicariously something of the 'frightful sorrows' and 'guilty and delicious joys' that characterised the lives of men in nineteenth-century France. To enter into what Philippe Lejeune called 'the autobiographical pact' with these eight writers makes for a truly interesting and worthwhile encounter."--Elizabeth C. MacKnight, Oxford Journals

"Editors William A. Peniston and Nancy Erber do a good job of situating the original editors of these texts, the doctors who first published them, in the burgeoning and by no means monolithic thought of the era. . . . Peniston and Erber have provided a real service by making these works available to an English-speaking audience. Anyone who has ever struggled to create a personal identity out of his or her feelings and the options provided by society will be fascinated to see how these men undertook the same struggle with little information and less hard science to go on."--Gay and Lesbian Review-- (5/27/2008 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

William A. Peniston is the manager of the Newark Museum's library and archives. He is the author of Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris. Nancy Erber is a professor of linguistics and modern languages at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York. She is the coeditor of Disorder in the Court: Trials and Sexual Conflict at the Turn of the Century.