Gay

Lord Ronald Gower born 2 August 1845 (d. 1916)

Lord Ronald Charles Sutherland-Leveson-Gower was a British aristocrat, Liberal politician, sculptor and writer.

The youngest son of the 2nd Duke of Sutherland and the former Lady Harriet Howard, daughter of the 6th Earl of Carlisle, he was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge.

He was a Liberal Member of Parliament for Sutherland from 1867-1874. He was a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, and of the Birthplace and Shakespeare Memorial Building at Stratford-on-Avon.

A sculptor, he also published a number of works on the fine arts. His most important sculpture was the statue of Shakespeare and four of his principal characters, erected in Stratford-upon-Avon. He also created a sculpture depicting Marie Antoinette on her way to the scaffold and another of a member of the Old Guard at Waterloo.

He also wrote biographies of Marie Antoinette and Joan of Arc, and a history of the Tower of London.

He never married, and was well known among the homosexual community of the time. Oscar Wilde's story The Portrait of Mr W.H. has been interpreted as a comment on Gower's social circle, and Gower is generally identified as the model for Lord Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray. In 1879 hints of his homosexual liaisons published in the journal Man of the World led Gower to sue the paper, but later in the year the Prince of Wales sent him a letter accusing him of being 'a member of an association for unnatural practices', to which Gower wrote an angry reply. John Addington Symonds, who stayed with him once, stated that Gower 'saturates ones spirit in Urningthum [homosexuality] of the rankest most diabolical kind'.

Gower's most notable lover was the journalist Frank Hird, a relationship that lasted to the end of his life. Gower adopted Hird as his son, leading Wilde to remark on one occasion, 'Frank may be seen, but not Hird.'

James Baldwin born 2 August 1924 (d. 1987)

James Baldwin was born at Harlem Hospital in New York City to a poor, unmarried, twenty-year-old woman named Emma Berdis Jones. Baldwin's early years were deeply troubled. At home - terrorised by an abusive stepfather; outside - taunted by his peers because he was short and 'effeminate'. As an adolescent, he sought refuge in the church, and after an emotionally charged spiritual conversion, he became at 14 a minister who regularly preached at evangelical churches in and near Harlem. As a young man , he held a variety of odd jobs - a rail road construction worker, waiter, bus boy, and elevator operator. It was during this time that he began to write seriously, beginning with book reviews and essays.

He also became fully aware of the implications of being black in America. Everyday exposure to racism left him deeply wounded. His increasing consciousness of his homosexuality added to his pain and confusion. To escape, he left for Paris in 1948 with $40 in his pocket and no knowledge of French. In France, where he would spend the better part of his remaining years, he became a professional writer.

Baldwin published 22 books during a career that lasted nearly 40 years; he wrote formal essays, fiction, drama, and poetry. In his early collections of essays such as Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Nobody Knows My Name (1961) he combined autobiography with astute observation to create brilliant critiques of American race relations.

A short story published in 1951 Outing - a story of sexual awakening centering on two adolescent boys - was his first 'gay' fiction. He revisited and developed the theme in his first novel Go Tell It On The Mountain (1953). The theme of sexual identity dominates Baldwin's second novel Giovanni's Room (1956) . Its all-white cast of characters and its candid treatment of homosexual romance 'disappointed' many of Baldwin's readers, but helped secure Baldwin's central place in gay American literature.

Another Country, Baldwin's controversial bestseller, was published in 1962. A complex narrative, it explicitly combines racial and sexual protests. Its setting is mostly New York; its plot is structured around the lives of eight racially, regionally, socio-economically, and sexually diverse characters. This multicultural cast constitutes a microcosmic America; the conflicts among them, therefore, become emblematic of larger crises in American society.

Subsequent novels further developed the themes of race and sexuality. Baldwin received a viciously hostile reaction to his gay-themed novels from angry black militants who were uncomfortable with the increasingly visible role of Baldwin - an openly gay black man - in the civil rights movement. His next novel If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) lacked a gay theme possibly in response to this, but his final novel Just Above My Head (1979) integrated a secondary gay theme.

Baldwin is a pioneering figure in 20th century literature. As a black gay writer in a mainly straight white culture, he offered in his work a sustained and articulate challenge to the dominant discourses of American racism and heterosexuality. As an African-American writer, he ranks among the finest. As a gay writer, he occupies a pre-eminent place.

Long before the Stonewall Riots of 1969 helped liberate the gay literary imagination in the United States, he boldly made his sexuality a vital part of his artistic vision. Even more important, by insisting on honest and open explorations of gay and bisexual themes in his fiction, he made a sharp break from the established African-American literary conventions. Through such a radical departure from tradition, he helped create the space for a generation of young African-American gay writers who succeeded him.