John Lauritsen studied English Literature and Social Relations at Harvard College. A retired market research analyst, he is now a full-time writer and publisher.

Website: http://paganpressbooks.com/jpl

John Lauritsen has been active in the Gay Liberation movement since the summer of 1969 — a member of the New York Gay Liberation Front, Gay Activists Alliance, Gay Academic Union, and Columbia University Seminar on Homosexualities. He has been well known as a gay historian since his first book (co-authored with David Thorstad) The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935). He's written for many publications, including New York Native, Christopher Street, Civil Liberties Review, Gay News (London), The Freethinker (London), SPIN, The Lancet, Bio/Technology, The American Dissident, and Journal of Homosexuality. His writings have been translated into German, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian.

For the past two decades he has concentrated on the English Romantics, especially Percy Bysshe Shelley, and is a member of the North American Association for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR). He's written five books in this area.

After living in New York City for thirty years and Provincetown for eight years, he now lives in Dorchester (part of Boston) Massachusetts, in a Victorian house, with a Turkish Van cat named Freya. He is a denizen of Widener Library and the Boston Athenaeum.