Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard

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Authors: Roger Austen

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Literary Criticism, #Gay & Lesbian, #test

BOOK: Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard
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title
:
Genteel Pagan : The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard
author
:
Austen, Roger.; Crowley, John William
publisher
:
University of Massachusetts Press
isbn10 | asin
:
0870239805
print isbn13
:
9780870239809
ebook isbn13
:
9780585284972
language
:
English
subject
 
Stoddard, Charles Warren,--1843-1909, Homosexuality and literature--United States--History--19th century, United States--Social life and customs--19th century, Authors, American--19th century--Biography.
publication date
:
1991
lcc
:
PS2931.A97 1991eb
ddc
:
818/.409
subject
:
Stoddard, Charles Warren,--1843-1909, Homosexuality and literature--United States--History--19th century, United States--Social life and customs--19th century, Authors, American--19th century--Biography.
Page i
Genteel Pagan
 
Page ii
 
Page iii
Genteel Pagan
The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard
Roger Austen
Edited By John W. Crowley
 
Page iv
Copyright © 1991 by
The University of Massachusetts Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
LC 91-8502
ISBN 0-87023-750-0
Designed by Jack Harrison
Set in Linotype Walbaum and Bernhard Modern (display)
by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 
Austen. Roger. 
Genteel pagan : the double life of Charles Warren Stoddard / Roger 
Austen : edited by John W. Crowley. 
p. cm. 
Includes bibliographical references (p.  ) and index. 
ISBN 0-87023-750-0 (alk. paper) 
1. Stoddard. Charles Warren, 1843-1909Biography. 
2. Homosexuality and literatureUnited StatesHistory19th 
century. 
3. Authors. American19th centuryBiography. 
1. Crowley. John William, 1945-  . II. Title.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data are available.
Frontispiece:
Charles Warren Stoddard in 1869, age twenty-six
All photographs are taken from Stoddard's Album, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Mark Twain's previously unpublished words quoted here are © 1991 by Edward J. Willi and Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company as Trustees of the Mark Twain Foundation, which reserves all reproduction or dramatization rights in every medium. Quotations are made with the permission of the University of California Press and Robert H. Hirst, General Editor of the Mark Twain Project. Each citation is identified in the notes by an asterisk.
 
Page v
Contents
Abbreviations
vi
Editor's Preface
vii
Editor's Introduction
xxv
Author's Foreword
xliii
Genteel Pagan:
The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard
Chapter One
3
Chapter Two
16
Chapter Three
26
Chapter Four
41
Chapter Five
53
Chapter Six
65
Chapter Seven
85
Chapter Eight
108
Chapter Nine
121
Chapter Ten
132
Chapter Eleven
151
Notes
169
Index
195
Photographs follow pages
64
, 84, 150
 
Page vi
Abbreviations
Works by Charles Warren Stoddard that are cited frequently in the text are identified there by the following abbreviations:
CRP
"Confessions of a Reformed Poet." Draft of an unpublished autobiography. The Bancroft Library. University of California. Berkeley.
CSS
Cruising the South Seas: Stories by Charles Warren Stoddard.
Edited by Winston Leyland. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1987. (Reprints selections from SSI and ITD.)
CUC
A Cruise Under the Crescent: From Suez to San Marco.
Chicago and New York: Rand, McNally, 1898.
D
Diary.
*
EE
Exits and Entrances: A Book of Essays and Sketches.
Boston: Lothrop. 1903.
FPHC
For the Pleasure of His Company: An Affair of the Misty City : Thrice Told (1903).
San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press. 1987.
IFP
In the Footprints of the Padres.
San Francisco: A. M. Robertson, 1902.
IFPr
In the Footprints of the Padres.
Revised edition. San Francisco: A. M. Robertson, 1991.
IH
"Island Heights." Unpublished notebook. The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley.
ITD
The Island of Tranquil Delights: A South Sea Idyl and Others.
Boston: Herbert B. Turner. 1904.
M
Mashallah! A Flight into Egypt.
New York: Appleton, 1881.
SSI
South-Sea Idyls.
Boston: J. R. Osgood, 1873.
TH
A Troubled Heart and How It, It Was Comforted at Last.
Notre Dame. Indiana:
Ave Maria
Press. 1885.
*
Stoddard's voluminous diaries were widely dispersed after his death in 1909. through the sale of his books and papers by Charles E. Goodspeed, the Boston dealer. They are now to be found, under a confusing array of titles, in several research libraries. When known. the locations of diaries from specific periods are indicated in the notes. I have been unable, however, to verify the location of a few passages that are quotedED).
 
Page vii
Editor's Preface
John W. Crowley
At this rate, the most I can hope for, it seems, is posthumous publication. -Roger Austen to
John W. Crowley, 30 May 1979
I first met Roger Austen in January 1977, in his author's query to the
New York Times Book Review.
He was undertaking a biography of Charles Warren Stoddard and looking for leads to archival sources. Although I knew nothing at all about Austen-for instance, that he was about to publish
Playing the Game: The Homosexual Novel in America,
a pioneering work in what was to become "Gay Studies"-I did know about some Stoddard letters at the Massachusetts Historical Society. I had discovered them in 1969, in the course of researching my own biography of George Cabot Lodge, an author even more obscure than Stoddard.
1
I well remembered Stoddard's letters to "Bay" Lodge: scrawled in purple ink on stationery headed "The Bungalow" in a hand that had defied my deciphering. Their friendship had prompted me to read Carl Stroven's "Life of Charles Warren Stoddard," an unpublished Duke dissertation completed in 1939, which hinted discreetly but did not elaborate on Stoddard's homosexuality. I could not imagine why Austen (or anyone else) would be bothering with Stoddard in
1977
unless it were to flesh out these hints. There was, I thought, no strictly literary reason to revive a writer whose prose was as purple as his ink: a product

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