Items

• Ioläus : an anthology of friendship
  First published in 1902, this book contains selections from multiple texts, including poetry and essays, which present romantic friendships between men. The collection is edited by Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), a writer and socialist who campaigned for sexual freedom and homosexual equality. This collection covers three centuries, beginning with examples of male love from pagan and early worlds, and features the words of some English canonical writers, including William Shakespeare. This is a reprint of a 1917 Mitchell Kennerley edition and was the first book published by John Lauritsen’s Pagan Press which aimed to introduce a new audience to classical, “pro-male” texts.
• Male love : a problem in Greek ethics and other writings
  Poet and literary critic John Addington Symonds (1840-1893) had several same-sex relationships both before and after his marriage in 1864 to Janet Catherine North, with whom he had four daughters. ‘A Problem in Greek Ethics’, an extensive study of sexuality in Ancient Greece, including the culturally sanctioned practice of pederasty (sex between men and adolescent boys), was written in 1873 and published privately a decade later in an edition of ten. In 1897, it was expanded as an appendix to sexologist Havelock Ellis’s ‘Sexual Inversion’ (though immediately suppressed) and was subsequently reprinted over the course of the twentieth century, often using fictitious imprints to avoid prosecution. The Pagan Press edition of 1983, edited by John Lauritsen, marked the centenary of the work’s first publication and was named one of the ten best gay books of the year by ‘The Advocate’ newspaper.
• Scotch verdict* : Miss Pirie and Miss Woods v. Dame Cumming Gordon
  A “Scotch Verdict” results in the Scottish legal system if a case is “not proven” or is inconclusive. Using archival documents, historian Lillian Faderman (1940-) explores this outcome in the 1810 case of Edinburgh teachers Jane Pirie and Marianne Woods. The two women were accused by pupil Jane Cumming of having a sexual relationship which led to the removal of all pupils from the school. Having lost their work, Pirie and Woods brought a libel case against Jane’s grandmother, Dame Cumming Gordon, which ended in the titular Scotch Verdict. Unlike many of the ‘Operation Tiger’ titles, this book is still in print. The Pirie and Woods case also inspired Lillian Hellman’s 1934 play ‘The Children’s Hour’ which was later filmed.
• Witchcraft and the gay counterculture : a radical view of Western civilization and some of the people it has tried to destroy
  This book by Arthur Evans (1942-2011) is a rebuttal to the homophobic bias of “professional historians” and academics. Merging myth and history, the text is a self-proclaimed radical and subjective vision of a pre-Christian world of nature societies, which touches on many themes including Druids, Gnosticism, witchcraft, matriarchy, class politics and magic as a collective endeavour. Published by the Boston-based Fag Rag collective, it was edited by two of its members, Michael Bronski and Charles Shively, and chapters were initially published in the journals ‘Out’ and ‘Fag Rag’. Active in gay liberation movements, Evans was a co-founder of the Gay Activists Alliance and of the San Francisco Faerie Circle. This text is still in print in pirated editions and remains popular with Radical Faeries.