American Byron: Homosexuality & the Fall of Fitz-Greene Halleck

Hailed 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.
In this insightful cultural biography, John W. M. Hallock (a distant relative) portrays Fitz-Greene as a prophet of the literary and sexual revolution of which Walt Whitman would be the messiah. The first biographical study of Halleck in more than fifty years, The American Byron traces the path to glory and eventual radical decanonization of America's earliest homosexual poet.

Author: John W. M. Hallock
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 03/01/2005
Pages: 236
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.73lbs
Size: 8.93h x 5.99w x 0.52d
ISBN: 9780299168049

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 03/15/2000 pg. 356
Library Journal 04/15/2000 pg. 90
Choice 11/01/2000 pg. 533