Overview

First printed in 1918, Ralph Werther's Autobiography of an Androgyne charts his emerging self-understanding as a member of the ""third sex"" and documents his explorations of queer underworlds in turn-of-the-century New York City. Werther presents a sensational life narrative that begins with a privileged upper-class birth and a youthful realization of his difference from other boys. He concludes with a decision to undergo castration. Along the way, he recounts intimate stories of adolescent sexual encounters with adult men and women, escapades as a reckless ""fairie"" who trolled Brooklyn and the Bowery in search of working-class Irish and Italian immigrants, and an immersion into the subculture of male ""inverts."" This new edition also includes a critical introduction by Scott Herring that situates the text within the scientific, historical, literary, and social contexts of urban American life in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Tracing how this pioneering autobiography engages with conversations on immigration, gender, economics, metropolitan working-class culture, and the invention of homosexuality across class lines, this edition is ideal for courses on topics ranging from Victorian literature to modern American sexuality.

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9780813543000

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Reviews

Scott Herring's strategically brilliant introduction to this new edition of Autobiography of an Androgyne provides a valuable measure of the advances made in sexuality studies in recent decades. He shows particular brilliance in his analysis of the work as a remarkable kind of literary hybrid, mixing elements of popular formula fiction with avant-garde fields of nascent psychologies and sociologies of sex at the end of the nineteenth century. - Michael Moon, Emory University

Scott Herring's strategically brilliant introduction to this new edition of Autobiography of an Androgyne provides a valuable measure of the advances made in sexuality studies in recent decades. He shows particular brilliance in his analysis of the work as a remarkable kind of literary hybrid, mixing elements of popular formula fiction with avant-garde fields of nascent psychologies and sociologies of sex at the end of the nineteenth century. - Michael Moon, Emory University

Herring is emerging as one of the most important voices in queer American studies. His elegant, lucid prose dynamically introduces a fascinating but neglected work of autobiography, giving us a unique window onto the bewildering dynamics that fueled the process of coming to terms with American sexual modernity. -- Michael Cobb * author of God Hates Fags: The Rhetorics of Religious Violence * Herring is emerging as one of the most important voices in queer American studies. His elegant, lucid prose dynamically introduces a fascinating but neglected work of autobiography, giving us a unique window onto the bewildering dynamics that fueled the process of coming to terms with American sexual modernity. -- Michael Cobb * author of God Hates Fags: The Rhetorics of Religious Violence * Scott Herring's strategically brilliant introduction to this new edition of Autobiography of an Adrogyne provides a valuable measure of the advances made in sexuality studies in recent decades. He shows particular brilliance in his analysis of the work as a remarkable kind of literary hybrid, mixing elements of popular formula fiction with avant-garde fields of nascent psychologies and sociologies of sex at the end of the nineteenth century. -- Michael Moon * Emory University * Scott Herring's strategically brilliant introduction to this new edition of Autobiography of an Adrogyne provides a valuable measure of the advances made in sexuality studies in recent decades. He shows particular brilliance in his analysis of the work as a remarkable kind of literary hybrid, mixing elements of popular formula fiction with avant-garde fields of nascent psychologies and sociologies of sex at the end of the nineteenth century. -- Michael Moon * Emory University *

Author Information

SCOTT HERRING is an assistant professor of English and women's studies at The Pennsylvania State University.

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