Charles Warren Stoddard born 7 August 1843 (d. 1909)Charles Warren Stoddard was an American author best known for his homoerotic tales collected as South-Sea Idyls and The Island of Tranquil Delights.
While he was still a child his parents moved to New York City, where they lived until 1855, when they migrated to San Francisco, California. In 1857 he returned alone to New York, lived with his grandparents for two years, and then rejoined his family in San Francisco. In a short time he began writing verses, which he sent anonymously to a local newspaper. They met with great success and were later published with the modest title Poems by Charles Warren Stoddard. Poor health compelled him to give up his plans for a college education. He tried the stage, but soon realised that such a life was not his calling.
In 1864 he visited the South Sea Islands and from there wrote his Idyls — letters which he sent to a friend who had them published in book form. He made four other trips to the South Sea Islands, and gave his impressions in Lazy Letters from Low Latitudes and The Island of Tranquil Delights.
In 1873 he started on a long tour as special correspondent of the San Francisco Chronicle. His commission was a roving one, without restrictions of any kind. He was absent for five years, during which he travelled over Europe and went as far east as Palestine and Egypt. He sent considerable matter to his newspaper, much of which was never reprinted, though some of it was among his best work.
Around 1880, Stoddard was co-editor of the Overland Monthly.
In 1885, having decided to settle down, he accepted the chair of English literature in the University of Notre Dame, Indiana; but owing to ill-health he soon resigned. The same reason caused him to resign a corresponding position which he held in the Catholic University, Washington, D.C. from 1889 to 1902. In a short time he moved to Cambridge, Mass., intending to devote himself exclusively to literary work. A serious and almost fatal illness interfered with his plans, yet he was not idle. He put forth his Exits and Entrances, a book of essays and sketches which he called his favourite work, probably because it told of his intimate friend Robert Louis Stevenson and of others among his host of literary acquaintances.
At this time he also wrote his only novel, For the Pleasure of His Company, of which he said, 'Here you have my Confessions.' So strictly biographical are most of his writings that Stoddard hoped by supplying a few missing links to enable the reader to trace out the whole story of his life. In 1905 he returned to California and settled in Monterey with a hope of recovering his health. He lingered on till 1909, when he died in his sixty-sixth year. To superficial observers he was a man of contradictions. He was essentially Bohemian, but of the higher type, a man who could not resist the call of the far-away land, his home, as he himself said, being always under his hat. And yet he was a mystic and a recluse even in his travels.
Stoddard has been discussed to be homosexual, since he praised the South Sea folk's receptiveness to homosexual liaisons, and lived in friendships with men.