Autobiography of an Androgyne
By Ralph Werther; Edited by Scott Herring
SERIES:
Subterranean Lives
Rutgers University Press
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.
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.
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.
SCOTT HERRING is an assistant professor of English and women's studies at The Pennsylvania State University.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
A Notes on the Text
Autobiography of an Androgyne
Explanatory Notes
Introduction
A Notes on the Text
Autobiography of an Androgyne
Explanatory Notes
