Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century

by Graham Robb

"A brilliant work of social archaeology....A major historical contribution."―Adam Goodheart, The New York Times Book Review The nineteenth century was a golden age for those people known variously as sodomites, Uranians, monosexuals, and homosexuals. Long before Stonewall and Gay Pride, there was such a thing as gay culture, and it was recognized throughout Europe and America. Graham Robb, brilliant biographer of Balzac, Hugo, and Rimbaud, examines how homosexuals were treated by society and finds a tale of surprising tolerance. He describes the lives of gay men and women: how they discovered their sexuality and accepted or disguised it; how they came out; how they made contact with like-minded people. He also includes a fascinating investigation of the encrypted homosexuality of such famous nineteenth-century sleuths as Edgar Allan Poe's Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes himself (with glances forward in time to Batman and J. Edgar Hoover). Finally, Strangers addresses crucial questions of gay culture, including the riddle of its relationship to religion: Why were homosexuals created with feelings that the Creator supposedly condemns? This is a landmark work, full of tolerant wisdom, fresh research, and surprises.
31 illustrations

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Queer, LGBT, Historical, Gay, Sexuality

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Graham Macdonald Robb FRSL (born June 2, 1958) is a British author.

Robb was born in Manchester and educated at the Royal Grammar School Worcester and Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied Modern Languages. He earned a PhD in French literature at Vanderbilt University.

He won the 1997 Whitbread Book Award for best biography (Victor Hugo) and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Rimbaud in 2001. In 2007, he won the Duff Cooper Prize for The Discovery of France.

On April 28, 2008 he was awarded the £10,000 Ondaatje Prize by the Royal Society of Literature in London for The Discovery of France.

Reviews

[George Ilsley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richly detailed and thought provoking. In fact, I started to read parts again as soon as I finished reading through the first time.

Because of our egos, we tend to think that we live in the best era ever, but this is not always the case with everyone. At least if you had money, in the 19th century you could hide in plain sight and most people would not see a thing — and those who did see would never dream of mentioning or naming or judging.

Did you realize Sherlock Holmes was gay? Apparently everyone knows this. Why am I always the very last to clue in? Do you suppose Dr. Watson was equally oblivious? Or was he in on it too? 😇

[Becca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I teach middle school English, and often I'll work with the social studies teacher to tie together strands of history, literature and myth. To get the kids into a new historical text I tell stories. It's short, sweet, and dramatic. I'm guilty of telling history as a series of discreet events that crash into each other with a kind of inevitability. I recap history with broad brushes and stereotyped characters.

In my defense, I think we all need a basic historical skeleton to hang our experiences on-- a timeline with a simplified sense of how things were: rugged 49ers, rigid pilgrims, stuffy Victorians.

That skeleton view of history is fine for seventh graders. But this book reminded me how much we oversimplify the past. We imagine there is some kind of linear progress from past simplicity to contemporary complexity. We imagine we enjoy modern uniqueness.

So all this to introduce this book: it's a revelation. Graham Robb cracks open the past. I imagined I knew what the Gay past was like: furtive, dangerous, disparate. Instead Robb presents a world with startlingly modern seeming heroes and anti heroes, proving our modern tolerance is not as newly minted as we think, and that our progress has just been change, not linear evolution. Gay people have identified themselves, have organized themselves, published accounts of their lives, disguised or performed their sexualities, advocated for their rights in myriad ways long before I'd ever imagined.

One of the first ideas Robb surgically dismantles is the Foucaultian idea that homosexuality as a social construct didn't exist until it was named (42). Actually, self-identifying groups of same-sex loving and gender no conforming people have been self-consciously visible for much longer than the modern words existed for them.

We imagine that modern homophobia and the visibility of contemporary gay culture makes us view the past with an artificially rainbowed lens. But in fact people even in the 1700s were aware of homosexual innuendo and subtext as much as we are. Although same-sex physicality was more prevalent than in today's American no-homo climate, people were aware that there was a line that crossed into homosexual behavior.

Gay men and women of the past had to carefully code their presence or risk legal prosecution (although less often in the 19th than the 20th century, contrary to what we'd assume) or medical intervention. But their secret symbols were codified well enough to be internationally recognizable. Robb lists delightful personal ads, detective stories and scientific questionnaires with allusions to whistling, beardless bohemians, Greek heroes, and sidelong glances.

It is stubbornly superior of us to imagine the literary past as unsophisticated and sexually innocent. In fact stories that explicitly or implicitly featured homosexual storylines were roaringly popular in the 19th century. The progress we have made is that modern gay characters are allowed happy endings slightly more often.

It is also arrogant to imagine that this tumblr generation has invented the art of queer hair-splitting. Early homosexual organizations spent their time and attention on critically categorizing and labeling themselves as well.

The take-home of this book is about more than the history of same sex love. The real message, to me anyway, is that we need to challenge the commonplaces. Once we have that historical stereotype, we need to flesh it out-- understand that while history may seem, from a distance, like a few plain bones, really there are legion nerves, tissues, vessels, cells, and molecules making up the body of the past.

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had three of Graham Robb's books on my shelves for a while – Balzac, The Discovery of France and Strangers, which I suspect I originally bought for the jacket painting of Caillebotte's Paris Street: Rainy Day (a grand impressionist work I used to lose myself in whenever I visited the Art Institute of Chicago). Finally I pulled Strangers off the shelf and read it. It's a sensational book disguised as a dull history.

In marked contrast to most writers on this topic (Foucault, Halperin, and any "queer theorist" I've ever read), Robb jettisons the theoretical bombast and approaches his topic with humor, intelligence and common sense. His style is so unassuming it takes a few pages for the realization that he's simply dismantled the "constructivist" interpretation of sexuality to sink in. In the process, he also establishes that the virulent homophobia we often assign to the 19th century is more indicative of the 20th.

Each chapter merits its own analysis. I'll content myself with saying that his social history is diligent and always interesting – but what made the book exceptional for me was its concluding chapters. "Gentle Jesus" traces contours in Christian theology that are, well, eccentric. (Check out Simeon Solomon's paintings to get a clue, starting with the Gethsemane lovefest The Sleepers and the One Who Watcheth.)

Robb's coda, "Heroes of Modern Life," is the icing on the cake. The hero figure he's referring to is that icon of modern fiction, the private detective. Beneath their many disguises, Balzac's Vautrin, Poe's Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, and Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes are actually... you guessed it. "Everyone already knows, instinctively, that Holmes is homosexual." Robb glances ahead at this trio's 20th century progeny: the dandy Hercule Poirot, the arch Lord Peter Wimsey, Miss Marple, Father Brown, Ellery Queen, Nero Wolfe, all before 1950 – not to mention more comic pairings: Batman & Robin, the Lone Ranger & Tonto. Joseph Campbell's Hero had a thousand faces, but he missed this one – who gives us a wink as Robb wraps up his unpretentious but impressive book.

[Andy Charman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinarily good read. Very balanced, intelligent and incisive history of an otherwise overlooked aspect of modern culture.

[Ed Erwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

How did I not realize Sherlock Holmes is gay?!

Maybe it is because I've never read any Sherlock Holmes stories. But I have read the grand-daddy of all detective fiction, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and I didn't realize that detective was gay, either. I was too focused on the ridiculousness of the plot to notice that Poe had peppered the story with clues about the detective as well as the crime.

OK. Holmes might not exactly be gay. But he is definitely not exactly straight either, especially in the early stories. And the same goes for a long line of detectives based on Poe's original model: Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, ....

I'll back up. This book starts by trying to figure out what gay (male and female) life was like in the 19th century. The first half of the book is dull, because there really isn't much information available. Robb does a great job of convincing that we shouldn't rely on law books and crime statistics. Even when strict laws were on the books, they weren't much enforced and many gay people were pretty much left alone. Even Oscar Wilde could have escaped prison if he hadn't been so pig-headed. But apart from crime statistics, there isn't much to go on.

Except in literature. And that is when it starts to get interesting.

Gay stories were being told in literature, but it was heavily coded. Those who knew how to read the signs could see it and others didn't. Some signifiers of gay men included the color green, scented candles, and trips to Naples. Lesbians just loved to crush things in their hands or under foot, or gnaw on tree bark, apparently.

Skip the early sections and just read the sections on literature. And don't blame me for busting your image of Sherlock Holmes.

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really, really excellent book about the history of queer sexuality. What I loved most about it was how thoroughly it debunks the myth that no one identified as queer before the medicalisation of homosexuality. They may not have used the same words we use today, but there were people who knew they were different, men who preferred men and women who preferred women. It wasn't solely about physical acts.[return][return]I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in queer history. Or, you know, really anyone at all. It was a very easy read, too. I didn't feel like I had to struggle through academic language (always a fear of mine when reading non-fiction).

[Russell Sanders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Graham Robb’s previous books have been biographies of Balzac, Victor Hugo, and Rimbaud, so, as he admits, it must seem odd that he decided to write Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century—an examination of everything “gay” in the 1800s. What he reports is sometimes fascinating, as we find that, contrary to what I believed, being homosexual was very much open in society, sometimes accepted, and quite often used in literature as subject matter. Often those literary characters were portrayed as tragic, but some books actually told tales with happy endings. The book is not only eye-opening, but it is a treasure for researchers and anyone who wants to make sense of our world in respect to how we treat gay individuals. I must say, however, this is not a breezy book that a reader can speed through. It is scholarly in content and scholarly in style. I did get tired of it as I read. I can’t imagine a casual reader of novels to plow through this. But I’m glad Robb gave this to us, if for no other reason than professors, researchers, and others of that ilk can be exposed, in one book, to a wealth of information on the topic.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Each chapter views homosexuals in the 19th century through a focus: crime, medical, literary, socially, religiously, and most cleverly, the detective novel. I thought since I've enjoyed so much reading of history and fiction in the 19th century that I would be familiar with much of the information and ideas here, but this intensively researched book had illuminations in every chapter, and several worthy quotes that were framed in proper contexts and language for me to appreciate their cleverness, wit, or subterfuge. If you're interested in this period, or of gay history, you will definitely have your perspective sharpened. Recommended.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

(spelling and grammar of this 2020 review made in 2024).

Of course this book is brilliant - anyone who has read any of Mr. Robb's previous works will not be surprised either by the excellence of the research, its immense readability, nor be surprised at the number of surprises it contains. I first read this book sometime before 2010, probably around 2005/6, and I remember thinking at the time how quickly in the UK gay life and circumstances (and elsewhere but of course not everywhere and certainly not for the better everywhere) was moving - the book was first published in 2003 and was the result of a decades worth of research - and he quotes in the introduction a survey about gays the only general conclusion of which was that most gays live in London and when when I read it first I could only think 'That would be a surprise to all the Gays in Manchester' and several other UK cities that had lively, very visible gay villages/communities. On rereading the book I was again struck by its excellence but also, again, at how quickly gay realities in the UK (same qualification as above) had moved. When first reading this book the gay worlds he describes in the cities in the UK, USA and Europe were recognizably related too and similar to the gay world I found when I moved to London in the late 1970s early 1980s. For a gay man born the year this book was published who came to London, New York, Amsterdam, Berlin, etc. in 2022 the gay world as it existed before or after 'liberation' doesn't exist anymore - not even the identifiably gay pubs, bars, restaurants, cafes, etc. that were often the entre into a gay world in places without as identifiable a centre as New York's Christopher Street don't really exist either.

The reasons for this change are vast but it is, I believe, a very real change and this book in a way is not just an intelligent look at the past but an unknowing prediction of what was to change. At one point Mr. Robb writes:

'...The lost heritage of gay men and women (one of the great strengths and pleasures of this book is that it is looking at the past of both gay men and women) was mislaid not destroyed. Sexuality was never so obvious nor so feared that it lead to the suppression of an entire culture...'

This may seem a long way from Robb's book but remarkable, incisive and perceptive examination of gay history at a point when it was still struggling to emerge and find acceptance (I would stress how necessary and worthwhile his introduction to this book, revealingly and rightly entitled 'Prejudice' is) and was being presented as a simply narrative of oppression working towards liberation. He revealed a complexity and richness that was in danger of being forgotten/lost or simply over written by a comforting myth which, if it had an applicability or truth, only applied to the post WWII UK and USA. I do not know, I only wonder, as an older gay man, what a younger gay person, someone born in the 21st century will understand of what being gay had meant in the past.

I would absolutely recommend that young gay person to read this book.

[Sophy H · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although the subject matter was really interesting, I found the writing style dry. Don't get me wrong, Robb is very thorough but that doesn't count for much when the information presented is done so in a textbook mundane manner. Also, some of the information I have read in different books before (such as Oscar Wilde's and Radclyffe Hall's troubles and tribulations). One thing I will say is that Robb shows equal interest in men and women here which is refreshing, as some books on this period tend to concentrate too heavily on gay men only.

A somewhat interesting but overall dry read.

[Valorie Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

How you approach this book is going to depend on why you read it: If it's for an academic reason, proceed with caution, but if it's just general interest, go full steam ahead. Graham Robb's Strangers is an interesting pop history book that explores homosexuality in Europe in the nineteenth century and contrasts it to the twentieth century, exposing the flaws in some of our most closely held beliefs about the suffocating puritanism of Victorian England. Overall, Strangers is an interesting read and worth a glance through if you're not familiar with this part of LGBTQA history.

I read this for my master's thesis, and I'd like to note something for other academics in advance--Robb is apparently a PhD holder and well known British historian. However, and this is key, while his Works Cited section for Strangers is extensive, his textual citations are spotty at best. He raises questions in the text that his endnotes then acknowledge are effectively red herrings--I think specifically of his assurance on page 265 that Sherlock Holmes almost losing his life on Vere Street is associated with the Vere Street scandal of 1810 (in which several men were arrested for same-sex relations), only to acknowledge in his endnotes that these are actually two different Vere Streets. He ignores that an 83 year separation between the arrests in 1810 and the publication in 1893 of the Final Problem (in which this attempt on Holmes' life is made) would probably mean that very few people would have immediately associated the two. Cheap assumptions and spotty citations like this make this a really difficult book to use academically, and (in my opinion) undermine some of Robb's other arguments about how the nineteenth century was actually better to homosexual men than the twentieth.

[Micha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is quite a terrific undertaking, synthesizing many anecdotes of homosexual life and love to form a picture that is more representative of day-to-day living for the 19th century man (again, studying primarily male homosexuality) than the more typically tragic and melodramatic conclusions generally made about homosexuality in the past. Although I was reading it for my studies I found myself entertained by it and would have enjoyed it outside of its immediate academic relevance. Robb isn't afraid to be funny and in the anecdotes there is often something utterly hopeful that makes you care in a personal way for these men from the not-so-distant past. He's quite discerning about the definitions of homosexuality and self-identification and I like the use of the numerous anecdotes in representing a more comprehensive view of gay Victorian life. There's much more to it than the legal aspects, or even the strictly sexual aspects. I recommend this one to anybody with a passing interest in Sexuality vs. The Victorians--always remember that the Victorians were no less naughty than we are.

A particular highlight of the book: learning that Edmund Gosse brought saucy von Gloeden photographs given to him by J.A. Symonds to Robert Browning's funeral.

[Veronika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eins dieser Bücher, die ich immer jedem empfehlen möchte, der denkt, dass "es das früher noch nicht gab" oder man davon "früher nichts wusste". ;)
Graham Robb zeichnet ein sehr unterhaltsames und detailliert recherchiertes Porträt einer Subkultur, die gar nicht so unsichtbar war, wie man heutzutage immer denkt, sondern im Gegenteil, die Schriften publiziert hat, nach Bezeichnungen für sich gesucht hat, eigene Clubs und Treffpunkte hatte und Kontaktanzeigen füreinander aufgegeben hat. Eine Subkultur, von der auch der gutbürgerliche Durchschnittsmensch wusste, dass sie existiert, und sogar, wo sie zu finden ist. Und die auch in der damaligen Literatur vorgekommen ist, allerdings so "kodiert", dass man es heutzutage nicht mehr so leicht durchschaut. Sehr empfehlenswert und super lesbar für ein Sachbuch.

[Bookshire Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm very lucky to be able to choose such an interesting and well written book as one of the five books to be examined from at my MA final exam.

[Lisajean · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high expectations and this book exceeded them. I highly recommend for those interested in lgbt history. (I gave 3 stars because my ratings are subjective and I’m only casually interested in the topic. Objectively, I’d give the book 4.5 stars. Very well-researched and thoughtfully written.)

[Trevor Seigler · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's tempting to consider the centuries prior to the late twentieth and early twenty-first a bad time for homosexual men and women, because they didn't live in the era of coming out and finding social acceptance (at least from those in society who were open-minded about homosexuality). But as Graham Robb points out, the nineteenth century and early twentieth century were perhaps a more hopeful time for gay men and women than we might have otherwise previously thought.

In "Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century," Robb goes to great lengths to show that, in some ways, the 1800's were a cautiously optimistic time for homosexuals in Europe and America. The Oscar Wilde trial of 1895 occurred less because of homophobia than because of Wilde's own (foolhardy) decision to sue for libel. And while tolerance wasn't always guaranteed, it wasn't always out of the question, either. The very coinage of the term "homosexual" didn't occur until 1870, but as Robb shows, the notion of people loving others of their own sex was not completely foreign or hidden from public view, either. Robb's main source for his history, as fitting his profession as a literary scholar, are the works and personal testimonies left behind by men and women, some famous and some anonymous, detailing not just their sex lives but their desire to be heard without being castigated into some sort of "lake of fire" for their same-sex attraction. I'm old enough to remember when AIDS was first discussed as "God's punishment" for homosexuality; it's safe to say that religious leaders of the past might not have been any more open-minded when confronted with homosexuals dying or being infected with venereal diseases.

Robb's book is a good guide that doesn't try to "out" any writer or figure from the past who hasn't already been outed or outed themselves. His is not a salacious account, but a sober, clear-eyed and sympathetic portrait of an era when the stigma of homosexual attraction might have kept many in the closet, but it didn't necessarily mean that homosexual lives were more tragic or woeful than heterosexual ones. Beginning with statistics on the legality of homosexual contact, Robb brings it together in the end by highlighting the homosexuality of famous literary detectives like Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes. And in between, he uses the words of many homosexual writers to show that the nineteenth century was not yet beset by the sort of intolerance that, sadly, remains in many facets of world culture to this day.

I've read two of Robb's other books ("The Discovery of France" and "Parisians"), and it's safe to say that I've become a fan of his work.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this about a year ago. Really fascinating stuff, but whatever Robb's argument was, it didn't make enough of an impact because I don't remember it. Robb offers a dizzying array of interesting details about the culture of those involved in same-sex relations (as Robb points out, "homosexuality" is not coined until about the middle of his narrative, and none of the people he wrote about would have described themselves with that word.) I think he would have done better focusing on one place (say, England, which he offered the most information about) instead of trying to draw in America, which ended up being rather haphazard.

[Darcy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thorough and interesting the whole way through. Filled with sweet, sad, and funny stories about individuals, as well as astute observations about the societal place of homosexuality over the 19th century (as well as the occasional foray into the 18th and 20th). I was surprised by how many aspects of gay life and identity remain the same over the passing of centuries. Overall, it was an illuminating and fascinating read.

[Ilya]

Re-read this one, it's an absolutely indispensable textbook to the not-too-distant history of our people. Graham Robb is a superb and very witty writer: "minds are always at their most inventive when fleeing from the truth" (p. 135.)

I think there is more to say — and there's probably a book in this — about how mass communications, industrialization, and other advances in technology made queer life possible in the first place.

[Karen]

This is a very readable, very informative history of homosexuality in 19th century Europe and America. Robb has a knack for storytelling, and he combines rigorous research with astute cultural analysis, while treating his subject with utmost empathy. A must read for anyone interested in the sexual history of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

[Ian Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eye-opening, extremely readable, and even funny. And contains an impassioned , well-supported argument that Sherlock Holmes was a homo.

[Katja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Den her bog har givet mig "vidste du godt..?"-materiale til resten af mit liv.

[Grady · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was full of interesting information and observations, but I found it a challenging read in that I appeared to repeatedly lose the thread of Robb’s arguments. On reflection and some rereading, I think that this is an artifact of a stylistic choice: the book is organized well, but - in this book at least - Robb doesn’t transition out of deeper discussion to his next point - he finishes what he wants to say, and then moves on to the next section of chapter, which branches off the main trunk of his analysis, and may or may not have any connection to the section he’s just finished.

Overall, the book argues (1) that homosexual subcultures definitely did exist in europe throughout the 1800s; (2) that gays and lesbians were generally not persecuted by the legal system, but often did experience a great deal of loneliness and isolation. He cites multiple examples of people who knew what they needed or hungered for - the love of someone of the same gender - but assumed they were uniquely broken until (or unless) they encountered other gay or lesbian people in cities or through written works, which could be immensely freeing. Robb doesn’t paint the 1800s as a paradise, but he presents Europe - and to some extent, America, but his research in the US is pretty limited - as offering a more livable environment for gay and lesbian folks than these societies did between, say, 1920 and 1960.

Strangers was published (in hardback) in 2003; attitudes towards homosexuality in (most of) the United States have evolved substantially since then. Robb discusses the experiences of gay and lesbian couples in setting up households, at least as to the degree that surviving accounts and evidence let him look inside people’s domestic worlds. But, being unfamiliar with this area of historical research, I am curious how much it has been deepened or expanded since Strangers, and how the struggles and advances of the last 15 years, including the legalization of gay marriage, has changed our understanding of homosexuality in the 1800s.

[Chris Cangiano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strangers by Graham Robb is a wildly ambitious, thoroughly researched social history of the life of gay men and women in the Nineteenth Century. Written, in part, as a response to the Foucauldian assertion that there because "homosexuality" was not named prior to 1880 that it can not be said to have existed until that point, Robb digs in both wide and deep to cut through the theoretical cant to examine how lives were actually lived. Robb presents plenty of evidence that while the Nineteenth Century might not have been the best of time for gay men and women that it certainly wasn't the worst of times. He certainly shows and never down plays the dangers and repression of the times but he also shows the surprising amount of tolerance, and self-actualization that were available to gay men and women of the period, and how for the most part they were able to live and even thrive. He serves up plenty of heroes along the way including, just to name two, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the German lawyer who essentially had the first massively public coming out, and argued in front of the College of German Jurists for a repeal of anti-gay laws, and the poet Edward Carpenter who publicly and unashamedly lived with his partner for almost 30 years and wrote against discrimination based upon sexual orientation in the 1890's. Robb's dissection of literary works of the time for coded references and allusions to gay life was equally fascinating, especially his dissection of the birth of the bachelor detective living with his trusty male sidekick. All things considered a wide ranging, smart, witty and thoroughly interesting and entertaining read. Highly recommended.

[Melis Amber · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is well-researched and very interesting. I'm always curious about the history of the "fam." So, I'll probably finish it. Unfortunately, it's also very much a product of its time (early aughts) and so far, I've noticed some really unsettling tendencies.

1) There's some very spurious labeling of people as "homosexual", when they were likely trans or maybe another type of queer. There's basically no allowance for anything other than gay or lesbian, which historically, maybe, but I'd have preferred at least an acknowledgement for the reasoning for that, rather than what feels like the author erasing queer people who aren't LG.

2) There's a lot of transphobia in the book. The constant misgendering and dead naming of Jennie June is unsettling, especially without any contextualizing about how she actually identified or lived her life. He even goes as far as to say that when the DSM removed homosexuality as a mental disorder, they sort of replaced it with Gender Identity Disorder, as like a way to be sneakily homophobic, which like NOT THE SAME THING. There's also a lot of mentions of transvestites, and I can't tell if he's equating them to transgenders. I'd've even accepted him using the term "transsexual" because again, the aughts, but like...what?

So, in short, I am trying to take it all with a grain of salt and for what it is, because trying to find all this information on the internet and in other sources would be damn near impossible, but I think a major addendum or forward to this book is necessary.

[Rebekah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned so much from this book about American & European LGBT life in the 19th Century. The content touches on LGBT life in the spheres of medicine, criminal justice, literature, family, culture, and romance. I enjoy primary sources and the book contains numerous fascinating stories drawn from personal letters, doctors notes, court proceedings, etc. You get to hear people speak for themselves, as well as get a feel for the culture. As you learn more about how society treated LGBT folks, you 'get' where so many of our modern attitudes come from. The lights start to go on. People never change, so these stories helped me understand my world better.

The only aspect of the book that I found alienating was that the author often uses other academic theories about LGBT history as a jumping off point. I've never heard of or read these other theories, so that context is foreign to me. As a result, sometimes his approach seems counter-intuitive or odd. In that way, the book is written in an academic style-- not for a beginner like myself.

But regardless, I enjoyed it immensely and wanted to call my friends saying 'did you know..?" because there were so many interesting tidbits. Pick it up.

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biographer Graham Robb researches the archives, diaries and letters of gay men, lesbians, and those who knew them to give modern readers a vivid picture of the lives and culture of homosexuals living during the nineteenth century.

The author helps us decode much of hidden meaning built into the pop culture, art, and literature of the era -- everything from The Ugly Duckling to the works of Arthur Conan Doyle. He uncovers a world of allusions, meanings and language that permeated society and culture then, a world now becoming lost in the mists of time.

The work comes in at 270 pages (excluding the notes and appendix), plus 16 pages of photographs and illustrations, some in color.

This book is well written, well researched and comprehensive. I strongly recommend Strangers to readers of gay and lesbian history.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This excellent, thoroughly researched account of gay sexuality in the nineteenth century occasionally veers into dour eggheadedness, but mostly it's like Graham Robb's other books: entertaining, surprising and filled with telling anecdotes that illustrate research with sly wit. Provides a useful lens through which to view the crypto-homosexuality of nineteenth century American and English literature and social customs. While being homosexual was stigmatized and demonized in mainstream nineteenth century America, gay life still had a distinct culture and recognizable mores that were not strictly medical, criminal or merely contrarian, as many accounts would have you believe. This book is a fine corrective, and enjoyable reading.

[Bhig · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dull. The topic itself is fascinating (esp. now, esp. here… I had a weird and uncomfortable feeling reading a book with “homosexual” on the cover while in subway), but the book rather assumes that you know who, why, when, with whom and in what position, so it doesn’t dwell on any of it. It doesn’t sell you bits and pieces of scandals and gossip. It is targeted to a society where you can discuss queer topics with everyone from your Mother to elderly professor to pastor.

In a word, I wanted to read something like “Queer studies book 101”, but accidentally landed on “508”. A few interesting ideas, but the majority flew over my head.

[I wish I had eyeballs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book, great research, lots of lesser known moment of gay history and pieces of gay literature unearthed. Lots of additional reading I have to do, based on the references in this book.
While it's nice that there is a sense of objectivity in a large part of the book (only some literary elements and some obviously personal conclusions the author arrives at are exceptions), sometimes I felt the Robb's wording was a little... inconsiderate. Sure, the deaths and exeuctions of gay people may have been statistically insignificant, but god damn it, we're still talking about executions.