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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... England " ) . Bradford's notation that Plaine had repeatedly committed sodomy in England before founding Guilford effectively removed the sin from the New Jerusalem established on American soil . Whether the social climate of England ...
... England " appeared in the Quarterly Review ( April 1822 ) . The poem shouts , " Growl , critics of England , growl on , ye hired hounds / Of a pitiful court ! At America's name , " and claims that American children are reared on ...
... England ( 1730 ) and Satan's Harvest Home ( 1749 ) had illustrated the evolving British sodomite's effeminate nature.76 Guilford's gossipers assured themselves that Halleck was " quite out of his mind . ” 77 In retirement , he would ...