Don Leon

Last updated

Don Leon is a 19th-century poem that claims to be by Lord Byron, and which celebrates homosexual love, makes a plea for tolerance. At the time of its writing, homosexuality and sodomy were capital crimes in Britain, and the nineteenth century saw many men hanged for indulging in homosexual acts.

Contents

Authorship

The author or authors of Don Leon are unknown, although there are several theories.

As Don Leon includes in its narrative and notes several incidents that happened after Lord Byron's 1824 death, it obviously could not have been written by him. [1]

The extended poem is well constructed and extremely well written, showing evidence of a classical education and knowledge of the processes of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, as well as an intimate knowledge of the poet Lord Byron's life, including his youthful homosexual adventures on his travels 1809–11 and his romantic friendship with the beautiful choirboy John Edlestone whilst at University of Cambridge. This has led to the supposition that it may have been written by an intimate friend of Lord Byron's – however not by one who was concerned about his posthumous reputation. It was not common knowledge that the poet was what we would now call bisexual until the twentieth century.

Scholar John Lauritsen was one of those who believed that the poem was written from someone within the Shelley–Byron circle. [2]

However, a more recent, and far stronger claim has been made by scholar Charles Upchurch that at least one author was William Beckford. In 1817, Jeremy Bentham wrote to Beckford, asking that he produce a work that argued against the punishment of men for sex with other men, and which employed classical references to support its argument. [3]

Dating and editions

Don Leon was originally believed to have been written in the 1830s. However, it is now believed to have been written at least a decade earlier during the period of significant law reform.

It was first published in 1866 by William Dugdale, who appears to have believed initially in the attribution to Byron as he attempted to use it to blackmail Byron's family. [4]

It was reprinted in a Fortune Press limited edition in 1934 and immediately fell foul of the obscenity laws; the edition was seized and ordered destroyed, although several copies escaped the destruction and come up every so often on the rare book market. The 1934 edition was reprinted in facsimile by the Arno Press in 1975.

In 2017 Pagan Press published a new edition of Don Leon & Leon to Annabella. All surviving editions, from Dugdale to Fortune Press, were collated for the text. This was the first edition to include critical material in addition to the texts of the poems: a Foreword by editor John Lauritsen, essays by Louis Crompton and Hugh Hagius, correspondence between Joseph Wallfield and G. Wilson Knight, and a bibliography. The original notes to Don Leon contain many passages, some of them long, in Latin, Greek, German, French, and Italian; all of these were translated into English.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Beckford (novelist)</span> English novelist, art critic, slaveholder and politician (1760–1844)

William Thomas Beckford was an English novelist, art critic, planter and politician. He was reputed at one stage to be England's richest commoner. The son of William Beckford and Maria Hamilton, daughter of the Hon. George Hamilton, he served as a Member of Parliament for Wells in 1784–1790 and Hindon in 1790–1795 and 1806–1820. Beckford is best known for writing the 1786 Gothic novel Vathek, for building the Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire and Beckford's Tower in Bath, and for his extensive art collection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timeline of LGBT history</span> Notable events in LGBT history

The following is the timeline of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fitz-Greene Halleck</span> American poet (1790–1867)

Fitz-Greene Halleck was an American poet and member of the Knickerbocker Group. Born and raised in Guilford, Connecticut, he went to New York City at the age of 20, and lived and worked there for nearly four decades. He was sometimes called "the American Byron". His poetry was popular and widely read but later fell out of favor. It has been studied since the late twentieth century for its homosexual themes and insights into nineteenth-century society.

<i>The Corsair</i>

The Corsair (1814) is a long tale in verse written by Lord Byron and published by John Murray in London. It was extremely popular, selling ten thousand copies on its first day of sale, and was influential throughout the following century, inspiring operas, music and ballet. The 180-page work was dedicated to Irish poet Thomas Moore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LGBT history</span> History of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people

LGBT history dates back to the first recorded instances of same-sex love and sexuality of ancient civilizations, involving the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) peoples and cultures around the world. What survives after many centuries of persecution—resulting in shame, suppression, and secrecy—has only in more recent decades been pursued and interwoven into more mainstream historical narratives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of lesbianism</span>

Lesbianism is the sexual and romantic desire between women. There are historically fewer mentions of lesbianism than male homosexuality, due to many historical writings and records focusing primarily on men.

Rosa Coote is a fictional dominatrix appearing as a stock character in a number of works of Victorian erotica, including The Convent School, or Early Experiences of A Young Flagellant by William Dugdale and "Letters to a Lady Friend" or "Miss Coote's Confession" in The Pearl. Henry Spencer Ashbee writes of The Convent School that "The book is not altogether badly written; no part of the narrative however is attractive".

Nicolo or Nicolas Giraud was a friend of English Romantic poet Lord Byron. The two met in 1809 while Byron was staying in Athens. Giraud, who at that time of their relationship was a fourteen-year-old majordomo and then student at the Capuchin monastery in Athens, reportedly taught Byron Italian, and was his travel companion in Greece. Byron paid for Giraud's education and left him £7,000 in his will. Years after they parted company, Byron changed his will to exclude Giraud. Other than his involvement with Byron, little is known of Giraud's life.

The Lustful Turk, or Lascivious Scenes from a Harem is a pre-Victorian British exploitation erotic epistolary novel first published anonymously in 1828 by John Benjamin Brookes and reprinted by William Dugdale. However, it was not widely known or circulated until the 1893 edition.

Greek love is a term originally used by classicists to describe the primarily homoerotic customs, practices, and attitudes of the ancient Greeks. It was frequently used as a euphemism for both homosexuality and pederasty. The phrase is a product of the enormous impact of the reception of classical Greek culture on historical attitudes toward sexuality, and its influence on art and various intellectual movements.

'Greece' as the historical memory of a treasured past was romanticised and idealised as a time and a culture when love between males was not only tolerated but actually encouraged, and expressed as the high ideal of same-sex camaraderie. ... If tolerance and approval of male homosexuality had happened once—and in a culture so much admired and imitated by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—might it not be possible to replicate in modernity the antique homeland of the non-heteronormative?

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hellenism (neoclassicism)</span> Art movement

Neoclassical Hellenism is a term introduced primarily during the European Romantic era by Johann Joachim Winckelmann.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lord Byron</span> English Romantic poet (1788–1824)

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron was an English poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and is regarded as among the greatest of English poets. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narratives Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage; many of his shorter lyrics in Hebrew Melodies also became popular.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sodomy</span> Anal or oral sex with people, any sex with an animal, non-procreative sex

Sodomy, also called buggery in British English, generally refers to either anal sex between people, or any sexual activity between a human and another animal (bestiality). It may also mean any non-procreative sexual activity. Originally, the term sodomy, which is derived from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Book of Genesis, was commonly restricted to homosexual anal sex. Sodomy laws in many countries criminalized the behavior. In the Western world, many of these laws have been overturned or are routinely not enforced. A person who practices sodomy is sometimes referred to as a sodomite, a pejorative term.

William Dugdale was an English publisher, printer, and bookseller of politically subversive publications and pornographic literature in England during the 19th century. By the 1850s he had become "the principal source of such publications in the country". Despite the numerous police raids on his shops and spending many years in prison he remained in the book trade for over forty years.

Satan's Harvest Home is a pamphlet published anonymously in 1749 in London, Great Britain. It describes and denounces what it deems the moral laxity and perversion of contemporary society, especially with reference to effeminacy, sodomy, and prostitution. The pamphlet incorporates some older material; this attempts to diagnose the cause of a perceived increase in the prevalence of sodomy among gentlemen. It specifies a continental European origin for both male effeminacy and same-sex relations between females. The pamphlet also features a poem, "Petit Maître", denouncing male habits of feminine dress.

The New Epicurean: The Delights of Sex, Facetiously and Philosophically Considered, in Graphic Letters Addressed to Young Ladies of Quality is a Victorian erotic novel published by William Dugdale in 1865 and attributed to Edward Sellon. The novel is falsely dated "1740", and is written as an eighteenth-century pastiche, composed of a series of letters addressed to various young ladies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boulton and Park</span> British entertainers and cross-dressers

Thomas Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park were Victorian cross-dressers. Both were homosexual men from upper-middle-class families, both enjoyed wearing women's clothes and both enjoyed taking part in theatrical performances—playing the women's roles when they did so. It is possible that they asked for money for sex, although there is some dispute over this. In the late 1860s they were joined on a theatrical tour by Lord Arthur Clinton, the Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Newark. Also homosexual, he and Boulton entered into a relationship; Boulton called himself Clinton's wife, and had cards printed showing his name as Lady Arthur Clinton.

In medieval Europe, attitudes toward homosexuality varied from region to region, determined by religious culture; the Catholic Church, which dominated the religious landscape, considered, and still considers, sodomy as a mortal sin and a "crime against nature". By the 11th century, "sodomy" was increasingly viewed as a serious moral crime and punishable by mutilation or death. Medieval records reflect this growing concern. The emergence of heretical groups, such as the Cathars and Waldensians, witnesses a rise in allegations of unnatural sexual conduct against such heretics as part of the war against heresy in Christendom. Accusations of sodomy and "unnatural acts" were levelled against the Order of the Knights Templar in 1307 as part of Philip IV of France's attempt to suppress the order. These allegations have been dismissed by some scholars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Byron's Memoirs</span>

Byron's Memoirs, written between 1818 and 1821 but never published and destroyed soon after his death, recounted at full-length his life, loves and opinions. He gave the manuscript to the poet Thomas Moore, who in turn sold it to John Murray with the intention that it should eventually be published. On Lord Byron's death in 1824, Moore, Murray, John Cam Hobhouse, and other friends who were concerned for his reputation gathered together and burned the original manuscript and the only known copy of it, in what has been called the greatest literary crime in history.

<i>Sexual Heretics</i> 1970 book by Brian Reade

Sexual Heretics: Male Homosexuality in English Literature from 1850 to 1900 (1970) is an anthology by Brian Reade, published by Coward-McCann.

References

  1. Stuart Kellogg (5 December 2016). Literary Visions of Homosexuality: No 6 of the Book Series, Research on Homosexualty. Taylor & Francis. ISBN   978-1-317-73510-6.
  2. Beerte C. Verstraete, Vernon L. Provencal (eds.),Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in the Classical and in the Classical Tradition of the West, Routledge, 2005, p375.
  3. Upchurch, Charles, Beyond The Law: The Politics Of Ending The Death Penalty For Sodomy In England, Temple University Press, 2021, passim.
  4. The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England. Transaction Publishers. 1 September 2008. ISBN   978-1-4128-0819-4.

Bibliography