Gay Life and Culture A World History

‘A stunningly beautiful, touching and thought-provoking book’–Manchester Evening News

‘Authoritative, accessible, highly informative and blessedly jargon-free … weep and rejoice’– Simon Callow, The Guardian

‘The marvel of the book lies in its scope and sure-footed tone; it is academic but entirely accessible, far-reaching but tightly focused … remarkably informative and sumptuously illustrated … a wide-ranging, eye-opening volume with sufficient substance to overcome its inevitably impressionistic format and enough of interest to encourage the curious towards more in-depth reading’– The Herald

‘Both political and critical’–Picture Book of the Week, New Statesman

Now in paperback

Gay Life and Cultureis a comprehensive, global account of gay history – spectacularly illustrated throughout.

From Theocritus’ verses toQueer as Folk, from the berdaches of North America to the boy-wives of Aboriginal Australia, this extraordinarily wide-ranging book illustrates both the commonality of love and lust, and the various ways in which such desires have been constructed through the ages.

• A fully illustrated account of gay and lesbian culture’s contribution to the story of humanity and the world.
• Robert Aldrich and fourteen leading historians from ten countries reveal the intriguing variety of their subject matter across the globe and through the millennia, in Europe, the Americas, the Islamic world, Asia and Africa.
• From homoerotic Persian poetry to tales of cross-dressing women in 18th-century italy, from the wild, hedonistic delights of between-the-wars Berlin to concepts of a third gender in Asia and Native North America – all are discussed and recounted from memoirs, letters, archives, and works of art and literature.

Robert Aldrichis Professor of European History at the University of Sydney, and is the author of The Seduction of the Mediterranean,Colonialism and Homosexualityand the age of empires.

English

2010

384 Pages

20 x 25,50 cm