Abraham Lincoln arrived in Springfield, Illinois, on April 15, 1837, and met Joshua Fry Speed, who offered the new legislator half of his double bed. The two shared that bed for more than three years, and Speed would later recall that "no two men were ever more intimate". The story of Lincoln's relationship with Speed, which opens this book, transports us into a forgotten world of love between men. Jonathan Ned Katz presents stories of men's intimacies with men in the 19th century, tales with all the features of a good novel: engaging characters, moving conflicts and surprising revelations. Katz draws flesh-and-blood portraits of these intimate friendships, and traces the way men struggled to name, define and defend their deep feelings for one another. Some of these portraits are love stories, some are sex stories, some are stories about love and sex. In a world before "gay" and "straight" referred to sexuality, men like Lincoln, Walt Whitman, John Addington Symonds and James Mills Peirce created new, affirmative ways of naming and conceiving their intimacies with other men.
Katz quotes diaries, letters, newspapers, and poems to offer glimpses into an uncharted territory of romance and eros. "Love Stories" is an original and engaging take on sexual diversity over time. By this book's end its many chronicles coalesce into a beautiful portrait of the varieties of love and lust in another social era.
- ISBN10 0226426157
- ISBN13 9780226426150
- Publish Date 14 December 2001
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Chicago Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 416
- Language English