1920 - 1929
Under construction
André Gide
1920 Magnus Hirschfeld is heckled and attacked by right-wing German thugs.
Carl Maria von Weber complains to Thomas Mann that Death in Venice is a depressing
account of homosexuality. Mann’s ambiguous reply seems evasive in every sense.
The Princess Zoubaroff, a one-act play by Ronald Firbank. Lord Orkish is based on Oscar
Wilde.
Prelude by Beverley Nichols – schoolboy love.
Iskander by Louis Couperus – a novel about Alexander the Great.
Mercedes de Acosta, playwright meets Eva Le Gallienne and they begin a relationship, which
lasts 5 years.
Hart Crane met Wilbur Underwood, a minor government official. They become life-long
confidantes.
The Dunn Inquiry condemns the original 1919 investigation into the Newport, Rhode Island
scandal.
Police question ‘Harry Crawford’, but on further investigation he admits to being Eugenia
Falleni. He was arrested for the murder of his first wife ‘Annie Birkett.’ The death
sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.
Karol Szymanowski visits Paris & meets Diaghilev, & discovers Boris Kochno is working as
his secretary, and possibly is his lover.
1920-6 Ludwig Wittgenstein works as an elementary schoolmaster in Vienna. He was attracted to
pupils and rough young men, but his affairs may have remained in his head.
1921 ‘Their Beginning’ by Cavafy is written – once he began to write more overtly erotic poems he
longer needed to wrote confessional notes.
Publication of Le Sang d’un poète by Raymond Radiget is arranged by Jean Cocteau.
Siegfried Sassoon visits Rome and meets the Kaiser’s nephew, Prince Philipp of Hesse. They
become lovers until Sassoon becomes discomforted by Hesse’s growing right-wing tendencies.
Andando e stando [Moving and Being] by Sibilla Aleramo. It includes portraits of real life
lesbians on the current Paris scene.
Cançōes [Songs] by António Botto – several poems obviously addressed to males.
Aldo Mieli founds & edits Rassegna di studi sessuali – many articles on homosexuality
appeared.
Early summer. José Antonio “Tony” Gandarillas (36) Chilean diplomat met artist Christopher
Wood (22) and they begin a lifelong relationship.
James Harwell chief naval quartermaster was found with a love letter was charged with
sodomy. He was convicted and charged with 15 years hard labour and dishonourably
discharged.
Hei Hsiang by Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen. It includes poems about Oscar Wilde & Bosie,
ideal youths and evocations of China & India.
Diaghilev breaks with Léonide Massine, when the latter proves to be heterosexual.
Diaghilev has a brief affair with Boris Kochno, but the latter becomes his librettist.
E.M. Forster travels to India, and at Port Said has sex with Mohammed el-Adl near the toe of
the massive statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps. The heat in India inflames Forster’s lust.
The Maharajah organises Kanaya, a young barber for whom Forster may dissipate his
lust, but only in the active role. Forster becomes corrupted by being placed in this
role.
An MP, Frederick Macquisten proposed a clause to the Criminal law Amendment Bill to make
any act of gross indecency between 2 women a criminal offence.
Death of Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, who left his estate to his secretary &
companion. Montesquiou was an inspiration to Proust, Huysman, Lorrain, Rostand
and possibly Wilde.
1921-2 Ferdinand Karsch-Haack’s short-lived journal Uranos – a ‘life-style’ magazine.
Henry Scott Tuke works on a portrait of a soldier – ie T.E. Lawrence.
1922 Ulysses by James Joyce published, which includes the sailor, a minor gay character, in the
‘Emmaueus’ episode.
Amor Sáfico e Socratico by Dr Arlindo Camillo Monteiro is published in Portugal. A history of
homosexuality. [Sapphic & Socratic Love].
Tractatus Logico-Philosophic by Wittgenstein – is dedicated to his collaborator and possibly
former lover David Pinsent.
Two Virgins in the Attic by Nobuko Yoshiya.
Peter Whiffle: His Life & Works by Carl Van Vechten – celebrating Bohemian world.
Earl Lind spoke of the boldness and “political power” of sexual underworlds even in
“America’s smaller cities west of the meridian of Kansas City.”
Oliver Baldwin falls in love with Roger Duval, a young French painter, in Algeria.
T.S. Eliot sends John Quinn some poems, which he asks they be kept secret. They seem to
reveal an obsession with male anatomy.
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Before book publication it has been argued that Ezra Pound toned
down the homoeroticism. The poem was dedicated to Eliot’s friend Jean Verdenal who
died in WW1. When John Peter argued that the poem could be viewed as a funeral
elegy for a dead friend, Eliot asked his solicitors to intervene, and all copies of that
Essays in Criticism were destroyed.
Thoughts on the Problem of Sexuality by Herman Bangs & Dr Max Wasbutzki – published
posthumously.
António Botto’s poems cause controversy – highly praised by some, denounced as sodomitical
by others.
Aaron’s Rod by D.H. Lawrence – can be read as his unrequited love for John Middleton
Murray.
Henry Cowell (25), composer, has an affair with a man (21) after his fiancée dies.
Cabaret performer Karl Gerhard starts using ‘The Jazz Boy’ as one of his signature numbers –
satirising effeminate homosexual dandies.
The Continued Extension of the Criminal Law by George Ives – he argues that the criminal-
lisation of homosexual behaviour is an unjustifiable infringement of the liberty of the
Englishman.
23 January. E.M. Forster arrives in Port Said to discover Mohammed el-Adl is dying from
consumption.
March. E.M. Forster burns his homosexual stories.
13 May. Cyril Wilcox gasses himself before a court was convened into homosexuality at
Harvard College. Ken Day was expelled after admitting having sex with Ernest
Roberts. Keith Smerage admitted several homosexual encounters and was expelled
and became an actor. 14 men were found guilty. There were 3 suicides and the
remainder were expelled and were pursued by vindictive letters from Harvard, and
stigmatised for life. This event has become known as the Havard Pogram.
C.K. Scott-Moncrieff publishes the first volume of his translation of Proust.
T.E. Lawrence meets John Bruce, a rough Scottish military man, who he secretly pays to whip
him on a regular basis.
Self by Beverley Nichols – the female protagonist undergoes experiences & sexual mores
encountered by the author.
Countée Cullen (19), future Harlem Renaissance poet, reads Iolaüs by Edward Carpenter and
understood something about his sexual identity.
Margaret Anderson & Jean Heap move to Paris, where they become involved in the vibrant
lesbian scene.
Rupert Doone, ballet dancer (19) flees to Paris, becomes Cocteau’s protégé & lover.
J.R. Ackerley spent some time in Florence with Norman Douglas & was initiated into some
sexual scrapes. In October he leaves for Paris. He had an affair with a waiter at the
Café de la Paix.
Harold Acton & Brian Howard launch the short-lived literary magazine, the Eton Candle.
The Mask by Joannes Henri François – a real-life report of what it was like to be homosexual at
the time. It includes a contemporary description of the 1920 Netherlands homosexual
scandal.
A Hasty Bunch by Robert McAlmon – ‘A Boy’s Discovery’ includes the rough and passionate
relationship between two 9-year-old boys.
Harold Acton & Evelyn Waugh have an affair while at Oxford.
Diaghilev (51) has an affair with the English ballet dancer Anton Dolin (20).
c.1922 Fillipo De Pisis (26), artist, writes about a homoerotic encounter with an oarsman (19).
1922-5 Evelyn Waugh’s main orientation at this time was homosexual according to Douglas Patet, a
biographer.
1922-40 Les Thibault cycle of novels by Roger Martin du Gard. Only tiny hints of homosexuality in a
substantial work.
1923 Magnus Hirschfeld, Havelock Ellis & Norman Haire found the World League for Sexual
Reform.
March. Alain Locke wrote to Countee Cullen introducing him to Edward Carpenter’s work.
The Flower Beneath the Foot by Ronald Firbank.
The Blind-Bow Boy by Carl Van Vechten – celebrating Bohemian culture.
Vishwanath Singh, the homosexual Maharaja of Chhatarpur, appoints J.R. Ackerley as his
private secretary, who stays for 5 months.
E.M. Forster writes ‘The Life to Come,’ a story with a homosexual theme.
Winter. E.M. Forster meets T.E. Lawrence for the second time, and a faltering friendship starts.
Around this time film actor Ramon Novarro has a love affair with the future composer Harry
Patch.
‘The Role of Homoeroticism in the Arab World’ by Ferdinand Karsch-Haack.
In the Jungle of the Cities by Bertolt Brecht – homoerotic tension between a timber merchant
and an impoverished library clerk.
Escape from Baghdad by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz – a poetic fable with a homosexual flavour.
A Hasty Bunch, short stories by Robert McAlmon – some have homoerotic relationsips.
Hart Crane cruises the Cleveland Parks to meet and have sex with men.
Lilias Barker, wife and mother of 2 children, changes her name to Colonel Leslie Barker and
went on to have various relationships with women.
April. Countée Cullen writes to Alain Locke and confesses that his month-long affair with
Ralph Loeb is over. He fails to mention another short-lived love affair starting with
Donald Duff, a white pacifist, on the edge of the literary scene. He also meets Harold
Jackman (23), a West Indian, who becomes his soulmate, although it is not known if
they became lovers.
12 December. Raymond Radiguet (20) dies suddenly from typhoid, shattering Cocteau’s life.
Together, a travel book by Norman Douglas, disguises René (15) Italian travelling companion,
as Mr R.
‘The Fox’ by D.H. Lawrence – a man threatens the love between 2 women.
James Lees-Milne (15) is seduced by fellow Eton schoolboy Berkeley Villiers. He would go on
to have passionate relationships with fellow schoolboys Tom Mitford & Desmond
Parsons.
Sergey Nabokov moves to Paris, where he shares a flat with Pavel Tchelitchew and Pavel’s
lover Allen Tanner.
Countee Cullen gives an inscribed copy of his sensual poem ‘To a Brown Boy’ to Langston
Hughes – an unrequited love?
Edward Heron-Allen publishes The Cheetah-Girl under a pseudonym. It contains a passage
discusses the same-sex coteries of the 1890s. He also wrote an unpublished short story
of homosexual erotica.
Police raid a drag ball during the annual Portuguese carnival.
In Sydney Bishop Charles Leadbeater is accused of indecencies with minors. The charges were
eventually dismissed, but Leadbeater could never shake off scandal.
Horatio Brown publishes Letters & Papers of John Addington Symonds, but felt pressurised by
Symonds’ surviving family to excise all mention of his homosexuality.
Diaghilev (51) has an affair with the Ukranian ballet dancer Serge Lifar (19).
Death of by Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen from drug use. Nino Cesarini was accused of
poisoning, but he was cleared by an autopsy.
Magnus Enckell, Finnish artist, paints Wings, depicting 2 naked boys standing together.
Nobuko Yoshiya (27) meets Chiyo Monma (23), a maths teacher. They remained with each
other the remainder of their lives.
It is later alleged [1936] that Leopold Ries (43), Dutch civil servant, contemplated sex with a
soldier at this time.
Pavel Tchelitchev (25) moves to Paris & has a 10-year relationship with Allen Tanner, Chicago
pianist.
Osbert Sitwell (31), aristocrat & poet, meets David Horner (23), undergraduate and future crime
novelist, who becomes his lover & longtime companion.
c.1923 Emilio Prados in adoration of Lorca starts to devote himself seriously to poetry.
c.1923-35 T.E. Lawrence is birched regularly by John Bruce, a fellow member of the Tank Corps.
1924 Sorrow in Sunlight aka Prancing Nigger by Ronald Firbank.
Billy Budd by Herman Melville is published posthumously.
André Gide acknowledges authorship of Corydon. A doctor is preparing a paper in defence of
homosexuality. He also publishes Si le grain ne Meurt, which recounts his homosexual
initiation in Maghreb.
Sophus Thalbitzer writes an article in a judicial journal, which helped lower the age of consent
from 21 to 18 for homosexuals in Denmark.
Some Friends of Walt Whitman: A Study in Sex Psychology by Edward Carpenter – surveys
earlier English-language studies of Whitman, but makes careful conclusions.
David of King’s by E.F. Benson. Includes hints of same-sex relationships.
A Calcutta newspaper prints ‘Ugra’s’ Chocolate - anti-homosexual stories, but which dealt with
taboo subjects.
In Excelsis by Lord Alfred Douglas is published after his release from prison.
The Village, a novel by Robert McAlmon – homoerotic relationships are included.
The Tattooed Countess by Carl Van Vechten – celebrating Bohemian culture.
Silver and Black, poems by Lan Lechoń – unmistakable hints of homoerotic desire.
The Village by Robert McAlmon – intense friendship of 2 boys, one takes it more seriously.
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann – the homosexual symbolism of the pencil episode was
inspired by a similar incident in Mann’s childhood with his friend Willri Timpe.
Mauritz Stiller discovers Greta Garbo and she stars in his film Gösta Berlinssaga.
30 June. Jacob De Haan is assassinated by the radical Jewish organization Hagenah.
He could have been murdered for political reasons, or because he had relationships with Arab
boys.
The Society for Human Rights is founded in Chicago by Henry Gerber. It was broken up by
police in a few months.
29 January. Sir Arthur Evans is caught with a rent-boy (17) in Hyde Park.
Fritz Haarman is sentenced to death for the brutal murder of a young boy. It is thought he killed
at least 22 boys aged between 14-18.
F.O. Matthiessen (22), cultural historian and future Harvard Professor, and Russell Cheney (43),
artist, fall in love at first sight on a boat on the way to England. They remained a pair
for the remainder of their lives, though they were often separated by work. More than
3000 letters were written between them.
Sergey Nabokov becomes romantically involved with Jozef Czapski, a Polish painter living in
Paris.
Fred Barnes, music hall entertainer, is found driving drunkenly in Hyde Park with a topless
sailor. Barnes was deemed to be a “menace to his Majesty’s fighting forces.”
Ionicus by Reginald Baliol Brett. It was devoted to the former Eton schoolmaster William
Johnson [Cory]. The culture of intimate relations he fostered between schoolboys may
be read between the lines.
Hugh Walpole meets policeman Harold Cheevers in Derwentwater. He becomes his chauffeur
& constant companion.
King Roger an opera by Karol Szymanowski is completed. It is set in 12th Cent Sicily and has
homoerotic content – inspired by his brief love affair with Boris Kochno.
Jean Heap leaves Paris, where Margaret Anderson is having an affair with Georgette Leblanc, a
singer.
Countée Cullen begins a sexual relationship with Llewellyn Ransom.
Hart Crane lives near Brooklyn Bridge with Emil Opffer. Crane describes the relations between
them as a “blood brotherhood,” but 35 years later Opffer said the relationship was
chaste. Crane wrote the “Voyages” poems for Opffer & began the final section of an
important poem, The Bridge.
E.M. Forster is embroiled in an affair with a married bus-driver, Arthur Barnet.
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson falls unrequitedly in love with J.R. Ackerley. Meanwhile, Ackerley is secretly in Italy with a lover when his father has an unexpected heart
attack.
Around this time Daphne du Maurier writes ‘The Seekers’ - an autobiographical story in which
she is a boy named Maurice.
John Maynard Keynes marries a Russian ballerina - before this date all his sexual encounters
were exclusively homosexual.
Cole Porter has a passionate affair with Boris Kochno, Diaghilev’s secretary.
1924-42 Mário de Andrade works on a short story, ‘Frederick Paciência’, describing the romantic
relationship between two students.
1925 The Fortune Press publishes Plato’s Symposium.
Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos. Contains the homosexual character Tony Hunter.
The Pious Dance by Klaus Mann. A gay character reads a series of gay texts.
Esther and Anna, a play by Klaus Mann – a lesbian couple are depicted.
Firecrackers by Carl Van Vechten – celebrating Bohemian culture.
The manuscript of Whitman’s ‘Once I Pass’d Through A Populous City’, his most well-known
heterosexual love poem is discovered, but originally the “she” pronouns were actually
“he.”
Wallace Thurman (23), author, moves to New York, and within a few days is arrested for public
indecency in a subway toilet.
Sergei Eisenstein involuntarily blurts out during an interview that he isn’t interested in girls,
then reddens when he realises what he has said.
January. E.M. Forster first has sex with Reg Palmer, a mixed race married bus driver.
Auden and Isherwood meet as adults, they had previously met at school.
Raymond Roussel designs a 30-foot-long house on wheels which causes a sensation at the Paris
Auto Show. Roussel was a lover of rough trade.
Anja and Esther by Klaus Mann – same sex relationships are represented on stage.
The Distinguished Air, short stories by Robert McAlmon – some are homoerotic, such as ‘Miss
Knight’, The Lodging House’ & ‘Distinguished Air’.
April. Daphne du Maurier is sent to a finishing school near Paris. later, she becomes attracted
to Mlle Fernande Yvon, who soon adopts Daphne as her favourite. Daphne wonders
if she has ‘Venetian tendencies.’ In the summer she holidays at Puy-de-Dome in the
Massif Central with Mlle Yvon, now known as ‘Ferdy.’
Monroe Wheeler meets would-be poet George Platt Lynes in Paris, and falls in love with him.
They form a ménage à trois with Wheeler’s partner, Glenway Wescott.
Cole Porter has a passionate affair with Boris Kochno, and starts a long correspondence with
him.
Eva Le Gallienne and Mercedes de Acosta part, when the former starts an affair with Gladys E.
Calthrop.
J.R. Ackerley’s homosexually-themed play, Prisoners of War, is published by Chatto & Windus
The play is eventually produced to a largely positive reception. It became the first play
with a homosexual theme to be passed by the Lord Chamberlain. Ackerley falls in
unrequited love with a working-class lad for the first time – Jack Jones – a delivery-boy
of groceries. Ackerley has sexual relations with Ivan Alderman (15), who fell in love
with Ackerley at first sight. They have an affair for 2 years, although Ackerley was not
in love with Alderman.
Jean Cocteau begins to have 2-year affairs with a succession of blonde lovers (18).
A cartoon is published in Punch of a ‘man-woman’ by George Belcher. She has a short haircut,
but now has to pay women’s prices again, because short haircuts for women have
become very popular.
E De Pisis, artist, moves to Paris to escape fascism & have serene homosexual encounters,
which were the envy of his friends.
Serge Lifar (20), dancer, is living with Diaghilev.
Virgil Thomson (29), composer, begins a relationship with Maurice Grosser (22), painter, after
they meet in Les Deux Magots, a café in Paris. They remain together until Grosser’s
death 60 years later.
c.1925 Osbert Sitwell meets David Horner, his lifelong companion.
1925-8 Federico Garcia Lorca has a passion for Salvador Dali.
1926 The Counterfeiters (Les Faux-Monnayeurs) by André Gide (56). In Si le gain ne meurt he
makes an open declaration of his sexuality for the first time. It causes a scandal.
Difficult Death by René Crevel – Pierre Dumont hears his mother saying he is a little degen-
erate. He commits suicide when his US boyfriend says he prefers rough trade.
The Sun Also Rises by Hemmingway. Contains a short scene in which the narrator is hostile to
a group of effeminate men.
The Castle by Kafka is published posthumously. There are several homoerotic episodes and
characters.
White Buildings, poems by Hart Crane.
The Hustler by John Mackay – Hermann Graff falls in love with Günther Nielsen (16), a prost-
itute. Eventually they can freely express their mutual love for each other, but society
intervenes.
Concerning the Eccentricities of the Cardinal Pirelli by Ronald Firbank. His most explicitly
homosexual novel.
The Graeco-Roman View of Youth by George Ives – homosexuality main theme, but at a safe
historical remove.
Lord Alfred Douglas (56) falls in love with Ivor Goring (18) and they have a brief relationship.
N***er Heaven by Carl Van Vechten – celebrating ‘authentic’ Harlem black lives.
Król Roger by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz – a homoerotic opera.
Maurice Sachs abandons his vocation in a seminary when he meets a young man on the beach
at Juan-les-Pins.
‘Tableau’ by Countee Cullen – youthful homoerotic miscegenation provokes both black &
white disapproval.
Medea by Hans Henny Jahn – a version in which one brother desires the other.
The Plumed Serpent by DH. Lawrence – homoerotic ritual & romance in Mexico.
Evolution of Pederasty & Lesbianism in Europe by Asdrűbal Antonio d’Aguiar.
Kenneth Searight retires to Rome. He works on 6 unpublished volumes of erotica. The only
items to survive were ‘The Furnace’, an epic verse autobiography, & the Paidikion – a
detailed listing of encounters with 129 boys.
Difficult Death by René Crevel. The male protagonist secretly loves an American man, who
has affairs with many other men.
Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli by Ronald Firbank.
Edmund Gosse burns all of A.J. Symonds’ letters, diaries and papers.
Fire!, an African-American Magazine. It features the story ‘Smoke, Lilies & Jade’ by Bruce
Nugent - the first portrayal of male homosexual desire in African-American fiction.
Evolução da Pederastia e do Lesbismo na Europe by Dr Asdrubal de Aguiar.
Siegfried Sassoon has a brief affair with Glen Byam Shaw, but stays friends for life.
Aaron Copland (26) has a crush on musician Israel Citkowitz (16) – unreciprocated.
Eva Gore-Both dies, bringing to an end her 30-year-union with Esther Roper.
Somerset Maugham buys a house at Cap Ferrat, France, which he shares with Gerald Haxton.
March. Opportunity magazine’s cover features a man in drag by Bruce Nugent.
c. Jun. E.M. Forster is introduced to homosexual policeman Harry Daley by J.R. Ackerley, and
they embark on a 6-year affair.
Duncan Grant artist has an affair with Eddy Sackville-West.
William Plomer travels to Japan and stays there for 3 years. It is thought he may have had a
same-sex relationship with a pupil with literary ambitions.
Karol Szymanowski (38) meets Zbigniew Unilowski (17), waiter and future novelist. He gave
him financial assistance for education & help to stay in a climate to mitigate his
tuberculosis.
Rupert Doone, ballet dancer, falls in love with Robert Medley, painter, in London & they return
to Paris.
William Haines, actor & future interior designer, meets Jimmie Shields – his future life partner.
Countée Cullen visits Paris, where he meets many boyfriends, with whom he later corresponds.
Michael Holland, an effeminate and bullied, but brilliant pupil at Lancing College is found dead
in mysterious circumstances on Wimbledon Common.
J.R. Ackerley has a sexual encounter with Ivor Novello, but is disappointed with the latter’s
performance. He also meets Harry Daley, a young policeman who had enjoyed his play.
They begin a close friendship, but its not known if this was sexual. He had an affair with
Johannes, a Dutch medical student, who was later caught with a 16-year-old. He was
fined £100 & made to have a testicle removed and replaced by one from a heterosexual
man.
Death of the sexually ambiguous film star Rudolph Valentino, causing mass hysteria.
c.1927 Miguel de Molina, future entertainer, in his teens found occasional work in brothels.
1927 Mr Fortune’s Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner. A man loves a boy on a South Sea Island.
The lad robust, attractive, colonised and exploited, but the tone is rhapsodic andincludes
harmony and hope.
A Tale of Pausanian Love by Arthur Lyon Raile (Edward Perry Warren).
Achilles in Scyros by Philip Bainbrigge is printed privately in a limited edition of 200.
Somerset Maugham (53) meets Alan Searle (24), who later becomes his secretary and heir.
Crazy Pavements by Beverley Nichols – rewrites The Picture of Dorian Gray, but the protag-
onist returns to innocence, but is demoralised.
Copper Sun by Countee Cullen. The poems ‘Uncle Jim’, ‘Colours’ & ‘More than a Fool’s
Song’ may be read from a homosexual sensibility.
Vestal Fire by Compton MacKenzie – contains sympathetic lesbian characters.
Demophon: A Traveller’s Tale by Forrest Reid – Demophon eventually reunites with his divine
playmate, the boy-god Hermes.
Hilda Matheson becomes the first Director of Talks at the BBC. Her assistants were Lionel
Fielden & from 1928: J.R. Ackerley. All three were homosexual.
Chocolate by Pandey Bechan Sharma [‘Ugra’] is published in book form for the first time. The
stories were intended to be anti-homosexual, but they discussed a taboo subject and
discretely depicted men embracing & kissing.
New Zealand author Frank Sargeson visits London, where a London guardsman offers to
perform any sexual act for £2, which he couldn’t afford.
John Glassco, bisexual Canadian writer (18) arrived in Paris with his partner Graeme Taylor.
He has an affair for 2 years with Robert McAlmon, and they travel through Europe.
Harry Stack Sullivan, neo-Freudian psychiatrist meets Jimmie Inscoe Sullivan (16) and they
begin a 22-year relationship.
A Story of a Paper Crown by Józef Czechowicz – Henryk, disappointed in homosexual love
attempts suicide.
In Search of America by Frederick Grove – the narrator shares a mattress with other men.
Siegfried Sassoon has an affair with Stephen Tennant, which lasted for 6 years.
Death of John Marshall, ending the 43-year-old same-sex ‘relationship’ of Warren & Marshall.
Lorca rejected by Dali, and after a tempestuous affair with sculptor Emilio Aladrén Perojo,
travels to New York.
Thomas Mann (52) falls in love for the final time with Klaus Heuser (17), Heuser did respond,
but it was a short-lived romance.
André Gide and his lover Marc Allégret travel up the Congo, which was filmed by the latter.
Prince Umberto of Italy insistently courts lieutenant Enrico Montanari without success.
Umberto had affairs with many young officers including Luchino Visconti. He also had
affairs with Jean Marais, actor, and boxing champion, Primo Carnera.
1927-9 The writers Robert McAlmon & John Glassco have a relationship.
1928 Naomi Michison’s short story ‘Krypteia’ is published on Black Sparta: Greek Stories. The poet
Pindar falls in love with a young athlete, Hippokleas
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall. Jonathan Brockett is a stereotype of a male homo-
sexual. The Express campaigns against it, trying to get it withdrawn. The Bloomsbury
group send Forster to speak to Radclyffe Hall, but he lets slip to her that it isn’t very
well-written. She scolds him like a fish-wife. In a separate incident someone tried to
blackmail Forster in the same week as the Radclyffe Hall court case. Details are very
sparse, but it did blow over.
Spider Boy by Carl Van Vechten – celebrating Bohemian culture.
Cuerpo perseguido by Emilio Prados – his only poetry collection focusing on the erotic
experience. It roughly translates as The Pursued Body.
The World League for Sexual Reform is founded. First honorary presidents were Havelock
Ellis, Magnus Hirschfield & August Forel.
Four Saints in Three Acts by Gertrude Stein & Virgil Thomson is completed.
Vita Sackville-West begins a passionate affair with Hilda Matheson of BBC Talks.
In Virginia Woolf’s ‘Moments of Being’, Julia Craye behaves like a Victorian lesbian when she
crushes a carnation voluptuously in her smooth veined hands.
Le Livre Blanc by Jean Cocteau is published anonymously. The unnamed protagonist is a
voyeur of men having sex, and himself has sex with men.
J’Adore by Jean Desbordes is a long love-letter to Jean Cocteau.
Extraordinary Women by Compton MacKenzie – sympathetic lesbian characters.
Italian fascism is in the ascendant, so Aldo Mieli (49) is forced to flee Italy for France with his
assistant, secretary & lover, Angelo Pisani (29).
Quentin Crisp is a rent-boy around this time.
Countee Cullen marries, but 2 months later travels to Europe with Harold Jackman – this has
led to speculation that they were lovers.
Willem Arondeus, Dutch painter, keeps a diary describing his longings for men.
Home for Harlem by Claude McKay. A novel about the gay and straight tawdry street life of
Harlem.
Goulash & Other Sketches by Bruno Vogel – homosexuals are sympathetic to other sufferers.
Hart Crane’s lover Opffer invites him to live in his father’s home in Brooklyn Heights.
J.R. Ackerley is involved with Albert, a short pugnacious working-class young man.
E.M. Forster returned to a London flat with his mother only to find one of Jack Sprott’s
“enormous boy[’s]” ensconced.
The will of Poul Andræ provides for the translation & publication of What Should the People
Know About the Third Sex (1901) by Magnus Hirschfield into Danish.
George Platt Lynes, photographer, on the invitation of Glenway Westcott joins him & Monroe
Wheeler in France. He has most frequent sex with Wheeler.
Brian Howard hosts the notorious ‘The Swimming Pool Party.’
1928-9 Auden visits Isherwood in Berlin several times.
At this time Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson wants to be trampled upon by the shiny boots of a
young man.
1928-30 A Defence of Uranian Love by Arthur Lyon Raile (Edward Perry Warren) is published in 3
vols.
1929 The short story ‘A Matter of No Importance’ by Naomi Michison is published in Barbarian
Stories. A Roman soldier falls in love with his British slave, but they are parted.
Iolaus by Edward Carpenter.
Les Enfants terribles by Jean Cocteau. The novel is permeated with the presence of Dargelos,
his beautiful schoolboy crush.
‘The Black Christ’ by Countee Cullen – a black man is lynched after he is accused of rape. He
is a victim of race and heterosexism.
The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman – includes a doomed homosexual subplot.
The Trout Breaks the Ice, poetry by Mikhail Kuzmin – his final collection contains his best
beautiful, complex, dramatic homosexual love poetry.
Alexis or Treatise on Fruitless Struggle by Marguerite Yourcenar – a young man leaves his wife
and young child, as he comes to term with his real sexual orientation.
Evelyn Waugh’s Decline & Fall is dedicated to Harold Acton, his former lover at Oxford.
Are You Crazy? by René Crevel – contains a caricature of Magnus Hirschfeld. One character
says of another: “all his problems stemmed from a thus-far unsatisfied wish to sleep
with a woman who had a penis.
T.C. Worsley believes the word homosexual still meant very little to the lay person. It was a
technical term.
Sarah Orne Jewett by F.O. Matthiessen – study of the lesbian writer.
‘Note on Some Water-Colour Drawings’ by Ralph Nicholas Chubb. He notes kinship with
David & Jonathan, Harmodius & Aristogeiton, Christ & John, Plato, Socrates,
Michelangelo and Shakespeare.
Britannia and Eve magazine features an article on Sappho and refers to her susceptibility to her
own gender.
The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas by Lord Alfred Douglas.
Alf by Bruno Vogel – love between Alf & Felix, 2 schoolboys.
Perrudja by Hans Henny Jahn – a man’s mental development & desires.
Charles, Vicomte de Noailles, is found in bed with his personal trainer by his wife.
Francis Poulenc enjoys an affair with the painter Richard Chanlaire.
Frank Sargeson receives a 2-year sentence for indecent assault, so he leaves Wellington to live
with an uncle.
Oswald de Andrade publicly mentioned Brazilian writer, Mário de Andrade’s effeminacy.
Mário protected himself by cutting off all contact.
Harry Stack Sullivan goes on holiday to berlin with known homosexuals, Harold Lasswell &
Billy Silverberg.
Lorca writes ‘Ode to Walt Whitman,’ contrasting a pure de-sexualised homosexuality with
the depraved sexuality of effeminate gay men. He also writes The Public & The
Destruction of Sodom. Only the first page of the latter survives.
Stephen Spender writes, but does not publish The Temple, a vivid portrait of a lost era of “boys
gentle and soft.” [published in 1988].
Aaron Copland is attracted to musician Paul Bowles (19), but is rebuffed.
Hart Crane manages to have a happy week over Christmas with a sailor.
Diaghilev (57) has a final affair with the Russian ballet dancer Igor Markevitch (16). Diaghilev
dies on 19 August.
Edouard Roditi, French writer, is seduced by Federico Garcia Lorca.
J.R. Ackerley persuades homosexual policeman Harry Daley to broadcast about the life of a
policeman on the beat. Ackerley catches clap from a guardsman he allowed to
bugger him.
E.M. Forster visits Africa, enjoying the company of Achille, a French sailor.
Auden & Isherwood are in Berlin enjoying sampling the homosexual nightclubs.
Brian Howard organises ‘The Great Urban Dionysia’ – guests dressed as Greek mythological
characters.
c1929 Suzy Solidor becomes the lover of Yvonne de Bremond d’Ars, who fashions her from a Breton
peasant into a stylish Parisienne.
1929-30 Lorca writes The Public – claimed by some to be the most important & formally inventive
homosexual play of the 1930s.
Bibliography
Ackroyd, Peter, Queer City: Gay London From the Romans to the Present Day, London: Chatto & Windus, 2017.
Aldrich, Robert, Gay Life Stories, London: Thames & Hudson, 2023.
Aldrich, Robert & Garry Wotherspoon (eds.), Who’s Who in Gay & Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II: London,
Routledge, 2001.
Bray, Alan, The Friend, University of Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Griffin, Gabriele, (ed.), Who’s Who in Lesbian & Gay Writing, Routledge: London, 2002.
Norton, Rictor, My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries, San Francisco: Leyland Publications: 1998.
Rowse, A.L., Homosexuals in History, London: Wiedenfeld & Nicholson, 1977.
Spencer, Colin, Homosexuality, a History, London: Fourth Estate, 1995.
Woods, Gregory, Homosexuality in Literature, London: Yale University Press, 1998.
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