English

Left to Themselves: Being the Ordeal of Philip and Gerald

The young adults novel Left to Themselves: Being the Ordeal of Philip and Gerald was published in 1891. It was written by Edward Iranaeus Prime-Stevenson, who has been called "the first modern American gay author." He later went on to write the first openly gay American novel, Imre: A Memorandum (1906). Left to Themselves was described by its author as "a romantic story in which a youth in his latter teens is irresistibly attracted to a much younger lad, and becomes, con amore , responsible for the latter's personal safety, in a series of events that throw them together—for life." It is perhaps the first gay novel for young adults, though it does not contain sexual content. Prime-Stevenson noted that his young adult novels were "homosexual in essence" and that Left to Themselves partook of the "sentiment of uranian adolescence."

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