Rictor Norton

Rictor Norton, Ph. D., British author and social historian

Biography

Born in Cuba, New York on June 25, 1945, Rictor Norton obtained a Ph.D. in English literature. He taught a course on gay and lesbian literature at Florida State University in 1971, one of the earliest gay courses in the United States. "His book The Homosexual Literary Tradition was based on his Ph.D. study of homosexual themes in English Renaissance Literature." (My Dear Boy) He immigrated to London in 1973, where he has since lived. He is a contributor to the New Dictionary of National Biography.

His work My Dear Boy edits sixty sets of love letters from men to other men, some of the included sets are letters from Marcus Aurelius, Paulinus of Nola, Alexander Hamilton, Desiderius Erasmus, Michelangelo, James I, Hans Christian Andersen, Walt Whitman, Henry James and W.H. Auden.

Works

Books

The Homosexual Literary Tradition: An Interpretation. New York: Revisionist Press, 1974.
Mother Clap's Molly House: The Gay Subculture in England, 1700—1830. London: Gay Men's Press, 1992.
The Myth of the Modern Homosexual: Queer History and the Search for Cultural Unity. London: Cassell, 1997.
(ed.) My Dear Boy:Gay Love Letters through the Centuries. Leyland Publications, San Francisco. 1998 ISBN 0943595711
Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. London: Leicester University Press, 1999
Gothic Readings: The First Wave, 1764-1840. London: Leicester University Press, 2000.
(ed.) Sex Doctors and Sex Crimes: Vol. 5 of Eighteenth-Century British Erotica Part I
(ed.) Sodomites, Mollies, Sapphists & Tommies: Vol. 5 of Eighteenth-Century British Erotica Part II

Essays reprinted in Gay Roots

Gay London in the 1720s; Ganymede Raped - The Critic as Censor; Reflections on the Gay Movement; The Passions of Michelangelo; Hard Gemlike Flame: Walter Pater and His Circle; The Historical Roots of Homophobia (containing material not previously published). Ed. Winston Leyland, San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, Vol. I, 1991; Vol. II, 1993.

Articles

References