Customer Reviews

Homosexuals in History

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
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A very readable and enjoyable book that provides informative sketches of a wide variety of gay men since the Rennaisance until the mid-20th century. The author provides just enough information so a reader can find other books devoted to a specific individual to read more. My only complaints are two, and one regards one of the book's strengths.

That strength is the lack of footnotes, which makes the text flow wonderfully. However, the author at times draws conclusions about a particular individual without providing any information on how that conclusion was reached. He writes as though to an esoteric audience, and if you're not in the know, you may miss how a conclusion was reached.

The second minor flaw is that in the latter part of the book where the author is describing people he had personal contact with, he goes way beyond what I think is acceptable interpretation of information and begins to editorialize on people and situations in ways I think inappropriate. It is a minor criticism, however. The book remains excellent.

This book is good as a reading book or as a quick reference for scholarly research in the area of LGBT studies. I personally found Rowse's treatment of King James to be a good starting point for a paper I wrote on homosexuality in Jacobean England.

Though titled _Homosexuals in History_, this work is
not a dry, heavily footnoted, archly worded, jargon
laced, academic piece. Rather, it is immensely interesting,
engrossing, enlightening, and an excellent background to
serve as base for further academic or personal research
on the time periods and the personalities dealt with in
the book.
Rowse gives his own perspective in the "Preface": "This
book is decidedly _not_ pornography. It is a serious
study -- or series of studies -- in history and society,
literature and the arts. Many men of genius or great
eminence appear in it: kings like James I and Frederick
the Great, artists of the stature of Leonardo da Vinci
and Michealangelo; intellectual giants such as Erasmus
and Francis Bacon; many poets, writers and composers,
scholars and collectors, soldiers and statesmen, patriots,
politicians. The subject offers immense variety, men of
very different psychological make-up, character, tastes,
and gifts. Many more could have been included, but my
aim has been to be representative, not exhaustive. And
I hope, by the way, that these studies may throw some light
on the predisposing conditions to creativeness: in the
psychological rewards of ambivalence, the double response
to life, the sharpening of perception, the tensions that
lead to achievement."
This work is not a mere recounting, but rather an intelligent,
absorbing, often witty, even humorous, and most often very

sympathetic account of these lives and the contexts in which
they found themselves living and involved.
Rowse does not deal with ancient times, for he says that
his interests as an historian began with the Renaisssance,
"the transition from the medieval to the modern consciousness."
There are 16 chapters, titled: Medieval Prelude; Renaissance
Figures; Elizabethans and their Contemporaries; Francis
Bacon and the Court of James I; Courts and Coronets;
Federick the Great and Some Germans; Regency Connoisseurs;
Russia and Some Russians; Eminent Victorians; French Poets
and Novelists; From Ludwig II to Rohm; Edwardians and
Georgians; The Great War; Cambridge Apostles; A Handful of
Americaans; and Cosmopolitan.
Each of these chapters has the lives interwoven with
perceptive, intelligent, engaging comments about the
times, the values and hypocrisies, the acceptance --
or lack of it (both by the societies -- and sometimes
crushingly, by the individuals themselves... many sad
examples of the effects of repression, guilt, fear,
diastrous attempts to "normalize").
The sections of most interest to me, and in which Rowse
really shines, are his extensive knowledge of the ins-and-
outs of British cultural history. For he includes not
merely the eminent persons one might have encountered, but
also lesser known, but highly interesting and influential
people as well. Thus, in the excellent chapter on "Eminent
Victorians," we read: "In the [English] public schools the
classics were the be-all and end-all, the Alpha and Omega,
of education. They portrayed the relaxed and natural
attitude of the Greeks and Romans -- as of all Mediterranean
peoples -- towards sex." Within this context, Rowse continues
to discuss the scholars, thinkers, and writers who were
influenced by that education and by the writings produced
within Victorian times which examined and enlightened the
Victorians about that Classical era of art, philosophy,
and accepted male desire and love. In this chapter, Rowse
recounts the careers of John Addington Symonds, Horatio
Brown, Lord Ronald Gower, the Marquis of Lorne, Roden Noel,
Edward Carpenter (a modern activist for enlightenment,
humanitarianism, and acceptance -- a devotee of Whitman and
Thoreau), Walter Pater (incredibly interesting and absorbing
reading), and Oscar Wilde.
The other chapters which deal with the French, the Germans,
the Russians, and the Cosmopolitan figures like Constantine
Cavafy, the Greek poet of Alexandria in Egypt, in the early
1900's, are also excellent.
Each reader may take away his own assessments and "readings
of history" -- but the text seems to say, repression and
trying to tough it out, or change, or normalize through
marriage have only brought sadness and damage (not only to
the self, its sense of its own value and identity -- but
also to others). But profligate, decadent, hedonistic
pursuit of pleasure and self, using others as objects,
rather than relating to them as persons, is equally
horrendous. The message seems to be about the desire
for caring love, more than carnal pleasure.
* * * * * * * * *

At least Rowse was a professional historian rather than an enthusiastic amateur who mindlessly collects great names to prove an unprovable point. But he was the product of a certain time and place, a certain social class, a certain mentality. In short, he was an educated Englishman, with all that this implies. This book is very snobbish, very ethnocentric. This is a book in which the world consists of England and a few other places thrown in for good measure just to show he's a good sport. This is one of those books in which Latin America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Africa, eastern Europe minus Russia, Polynesia, Portugal, etc. simply don't exist; or, if they do exist, they shouldn't. Neither do the lower classes exist, nor certain races unworthy of mention in polite society. He says that Shakespeare had no sexual interest in Mr W. H. of the Sonnets. Far be it from Rowse to conceive of gay history as a social history involving ordinary men. There are no footnotes, a fatal mistake.

Rowse's stereotypical attitude to the "cause" of homosexuality, (A Mother's Boy) figures prominently in this very poor study of famous homosexuals in history. The book read in the 21st Century shows up the superficial analysis of several people in this book. His rant on Wilde was hilarious which is about the only reason to ever open the book. You get the feeling that Rowse thought more highly of his abilities than posterity will endorse.