"The man who thought himself a woman" and other queer nineteenth-century short stories / edited and with an introduction by Christopher Looby.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Looby, Christopher, editor, writer of introduction.

Whitman, Walt, 1960- contributor.

Twain, Mark, 1835-1910, contributor.

Taylor, Bayard, 1825-1878, contributor.

Series:

Q19: the queer American nineteenth century

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Short stories, American.

Gender identity--Fiction.

Gender identity.

Sex role--Fiction.

Sex role.

American fiction--19th century.

American fiction.

Gender Identity.

Medical Subjects:

Gender Identity.

Genre:

Short stories, American.

Fiction.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 311 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : PENN University of Pennsylvania Press, [2017]

Summary:

A man in small-town America wears the clothing of his wife and sisters; satisfied at last that he has "a perfect suit of garments appropriate for my sex," he commits suicide, asking only that he be buried dressed as a woman. A country maid has a passionate summer relationship with an heiress, the memory of which sustains her for the next forty years. A girl is carried by a strong wind to a place where she discovers that everything is made of candy, including the "queer people" whom she licks and cats. If these are not the kinds of stories we expect to find in nineteenth-century American literature, it is perhaps because, we have been looking in the wrong places. The stories gathered here are written by a diverse assortment of writers-women and men, obscure and famous: Herman Melville, Willa Gather, Henry James, and Louisa May Alcoa, among others. Exploring the vagaries of gender identity, erotic desire, and affectional attachments that do not map easily onto present categories of sex and gender, they celebrate, mourn, and question the different modes of embodiment and forgotten styles of pleasure of nineteenth-century America. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction : queer short stories in nineteenth-century America / Christopher Looby

The child's champion (1841) / Walt Whitman

A south-sea idyl (1869) / Charles Warren Stoddard

The haunted valley (1871) / Ambrose Bierce

Felipa (1876) / Constance Fenimore Woolson

My Lorelei : a Heidelberg romance (1880) / Octave Thanet

The bachelors (1836) / Samuiel L. Knapp

The man who thought himself a woman (1857) / Anonymous

Two friends (1887) / Mary Wilkins Freeman

How Nancy Jackson married Kate Wilson (c. 1900-1903) / Mark Twain

Paul's case : a study in temperament (1905) / Willa Cather

Twin-love (1871) / Bayard Taylor

Out of the deeps (1872) / Elizabeth Stoddard

In the tules (1895) / Bert Harte

Martha's lady (1897) / Sarah Orne Jewett

The heart's desire (1908) / Sui Sin Far

I and my chimney (1856) / Herman Melville

The candy country (1885) / Louisa May Alcott

Dave's neckliss (1889) / Charles W. Chesnutt

Schopenhauer in the air (1894) / Sadakichi Hartmann

Lilacs (1896) / Kate Chopin.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 295-311).

ISBN:

9780812223668

0812223667

OCLC:

945950072