![famous gay men in literature famous gay men in literature](https://assets.teenvogue.com/photos/5ede9c15b2ad5aa0937da34b/master/pass/Ent_LGBTQ-Books_06-08_PROMOPROMO.jpg)
Over the years he formed friendships with many luminaries including the Stravinskys and the young American writer Truman Capote. Isherwood settled in California and pursued screenwriting, among other things. They fled together in 1933 and remained in a vagabond state until Heinz' arrest as a draft evader in 1937.Īfter a trip to China with Auden, both men immigrated to the US in 1939 (Isherwood became a citizen in 1946) and as pacifists, were criticized by their British compatriots for not returning to England during WW II. People he met there, like Jean Ross (who would become Sally Bowles in his "Berlin" Books and the subsequent stage and film adaptations, the most famous of which is Cabaret) made their way as composite characters into his novels.ĭuring his time in Berlin, Isherwood began a relationship with a young German named Heinz Nedermeyer (this relationship, too, found its way into his writing). From 1929 to 1933 he lived in Berlin, supporting himself teaching English and pursuing an avocation as a Communist camp-follower. In the 20's and 30's he formed part of a circle of writers and artists many of whom were becoming or went on to become famous themselves, chief among them Wystan Auden (with whom he collaborated and had an intermittent sexual affair which he describes in one of his autobiographies as "awkward"), Stephen Spender, Edward Upward and the composer Benjamin Britten. He attended Cambridge but did not take his degree. Note: a more comprehensive but still brief overview with tie-ins to his literary works can be found at the Isherwood Foundation website.Ĭhristopher Isherwood was born near Manchester, England in 1904 to an affluent and educated family. What I found most interesting were his diaries which is where I found great insight into a gay male life lived in a way which was very much ahead of its time.
#FAMOUS GAY MEN IN LITERATURE SKIN#
Over the next few years, as time permitted, I worked through the published opus of Isherwood (including the plays with Wystan Auden: The Dog Beneath the Skin (1932), which Isherwood and Auden used to refer to as "Dogskin", The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938) all three of which are, I hate to say, nearly unreadable today. Norris) which to my delight dealt with the same period during which Isherwood was living in Berlin from 1929 to 1933. I devoured it in days and made a mad dash back to the Sterngasse and Shakespeare & Company for a copy of Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) (also known as The Last of Mr.
#FAMOUS GAY MEN IN LITERATURE TV#
READ MORE: How the Great Depression Helped End Prohibitionīy the post-World War II era, a larger cultural shift toward earlier marriage and suburban living, the advent of TV and the anti-homosexuality crusades championed by Joseph McCarthy would help push the flowering of gay culture represented by the Pansy Craze firmly into the nation’s rear-view mirror.ĭrag balls, and the spirit of freedom and exuberance they represented, never went away entirely-but it would be decades before LGBTQ life would flourish so publicly again.I was in my early twenties and living in Vienna, Austria when I discovered the writing of Christopher Isherwood, and did so as many people do, by reading Goodbye to Berlin (1939).
![famous gay men in literature famous gay men in literature](https://www.history.com/.image/ar_16:9%2Cc_fill%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cg_faces:center%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_768/MTU3ODc5MDg2OTc0Mzc5MzM3/literature-19th-century-a-portrait-of-oscar-wilde-1854-1900-the-irish-dramatist-and-master-of-the-social-comedy-among-his-many-acclaimed-works-were-the-importance-of-being-earnest-and-lady.jpg)
This not only discouraged gay men from participating in public life, but also “made homosexuality seem more dangerous to the average American.” In the mid- to late ‘30s, Heap points out, a wave of sensationalized sex crimes “provoked hysteria about sex criminals, who were often-in the mind of the public and in the mind of authorities-equated with gay men.” The sale of liquor was legal again, but newly enforced laws and regulations prohibited restaurants and bars from hiring gay employees or even serving gay patrons. Each gay enclave, wrote George Chauncey in his book Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, had a different class and ethnic character, cultural style and public reputation. In addition to these groups, whom social reformers in the early 1900s would call “male sex perverts,” a number of nightclubs and theaters were featuring stage performances by female impersonators these spots were mainly located in the Levee District on Chicago’s South Side, the Bowery in New York City and other largely working-class neighborhoods in American cities.īy the 1920s, gay men had established a presence in Harlem and the bohemian mecca of Greenwich Village (as well as the seedier environs of Times Square), and the city’s first lesbian enclaves had appeared in Harlem and the Village. “In the late 19th century, there was an increasingly visible presence of gender-non-conforming men who were engaged in sexual relationships with other men in major American cities,” says Chad Heap, a professor of American Studies at George Washington University and the author of Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940.