The American Byron: Homosexuality and the Fall of Fitz-Greene HalleckHailed in the mid-nineteenth century as the most important American poet of the period, Fitz-Greene Halleck was a close friend of William C. Bryant, an associate of Charles Dickens and Washington Irving, and a celebrity sought out by John Jacob Astor and American presidents. Halleck, an attractive man of wit and charm, was dubbed "the American Byron" because he both employed similar poetic strategies and challenged the most sacred institutions of his day. A large general readership enjoyed his verse, though it was infused with homosexual themes. Indeed, Halleck's love for another man would be fictionalized in Bayard Taylor's novel Joseph and His Friend a century before the Stonewall riots. |
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... [ Drake's ] wife's father is rich , I imagine he will write [ verse ] no more . He was poor , as poets , of course ... Drake , who now joined the likes of James Br and Davis as a virginal offering ultimately seduced by his own fortune ...
... Drake , but his humor declined along with Drake's rapidly deteriorating health . A French physician in New York unsuccessfully tried to relieve dizzi- ness cause by Halleck's bad ear , using a painful moxa remedy , an organic Eastern ...
... Drake's biography a few months later , after Janet Halleck Drake ( Mrs. Commodore DeKay ) completed the first edition of her father's poems . Since she was only an infant when Drake died , she had asked Halleck to prepare the memoir ...