View source for Edward Prime-Stevenson

Edward Irenaus Prime-Stevenson was born on January 29, 1858, in Madison NJ to a wealthy and cultured family. After a private school upbringing near Freehold he claimed to have passed the New Jersey bar exam though he never practiced. His widowed mother and sister had an apartment in Manhattan and he maintained his residence at "Small House" in Hackensack, shuttling back and forth between both places until Manhattan eventually claimed him. Stevenson established a strong niche for himself in the world of publishing, allying himself with the Harpers as well as ''The New York Independent''.  He tried his hand at poetry, short fiction, magazine serials, and travel essays before he found his chief strength in music criticism.  His reviews and essays were marvelously well-balanced and thought-out, and he made a modest name for himself in the music world.

In addition, Stevenson penned two boys books of note early in his career. ''White Cockades: An Incident of the 'Forty-Five''' (1887) was historical fiction, tracing a young boy's infatuation of the Prince Pretender--a feeling that is reciprocated. In 1891, ''Left to Themselves: Being the Ordeal of Philip and Gerald'' is the better book and drew more attention. In startlingly frank terms the story traces the growing affection between the eponymous heroes who meet in the opening pages. An older boy's obsession with a beautiful younger lad seemingly abandoned by his family survives the fiction's many improbable adventures, and sees them together happily "throughout their endless lives" by the end.  Such overt depiction of homosexual feelings in boys books was not unprecedented when we think of contemporary Horatio Alger productions, but while Alger's sensibilities were probably subconscious, Stevenson admitted later that he had deliberately infused his fiction with a gay subtext that now seems quite obvious to knowing eyes. The two works remain remarkable incursions into the genre of boys books and ''Philip and Gerald'' with its happy ending is a wonderful production that foretells Stevenson's later fiction.

By 1900 Stevenson's mother had died (probably leaving him independently wealthy and emotionally free) and the one great affair of the 1890s, with Harry Harkness Flagler (the son of the wealthy railroad magnate), had ended badly. Whether their feelings were truly mutual or not, it was Flagler who abandoned the heart-broken Stevenson, who later would depict this episode in his short story "Once But Not Twice" (1913). He began to travel more and more frequently and eventually abandoned America altogether, leaving a distinguished career and social ties behind him for the more accepting sophistication of Europe. He gradually found himself moving from London to Paris to Budapest to Florence to Rome, and developing a regular circuit of these cities, never staying in any place past a season.  He made a modest name for himself as a lecturer in various subjects, but found most success with music "auditions" and readings of his own fiction.  The Hotel Minerva in Florence, for example, hosted him throughout the 1920s.  Stevenson apparently never settled down with any person in particular but became the habitue of the rented room, and roaming as he said through the highest and the lowest social circles with equal ease.

He never stopped writing, however, and in a short period after the turn of the century he wrote the two books for which he remains famous in gay literary history.  Always at his own expense, and under the duress of proofing books through an Italian press, Stevenson published (as Xavier Mayne) ''Imre: A Memorandum'' in 1906, followed two years later by ''The Intersexes: A History of Simisexualism as a Problem in Social Life''.  Both books were defenses of homosexuality in a period where the medicalization of the homosexual pronounced them as nature's mistakes.  In ''Imre'', which he called his little "psychological novel," a young Hungarian military officer meets an older man (very much like Prime-Stevenson himself) and after several misfires eventually reveal their true natures to each other, winding up happily together.  This happy ending was remarkable as the first time such a thing had happened in English-speaking fiction (it preceded Forster's ''Maurice'' by seven years). The happy conclusion is noteworthy because unprecedented. The novel remains a moving recounting of the private agonies of Difference; it humanizes the homosexual image in a way that had not been done so sympathetically before, American writing.  The book is heavily psychological, emphasizing character over action, so that it reads like an amalgamation of the James brothers Henry and William.  ''Intersexes'', written at approximately the same time, is a grand defense of homosexuality against the tyranny of dynamic psychology, which sought to pathologize gay people. Half-smilingly dedicating his work to Krafft-Ebing, Stevenson attempted a vast history of Western homosexuality from the Greeks to the present, defending them as part of Nature's intended canvas. He analyzes, catalogues, reveals, defends. Just as quick to see gay rogues as heroes, he outs history's famous names, good and bad, and is particularly strong in discussing literary depictions of homosexuality. Especially moving are the "modern" sections, which recount contemporary anecdotes and scandals; in doing so he paints a thoughtful and certainly indelible picture of the state of homosexuality ca. 1900, stunning because it is written "from the inside."

In 1913 Stevenson published ''Her Enemy, Some Friends--and Other Personages'', a collection of short fiction remarkable because it included many overtly gay stories, both comic and tragic. Just as remarkable was the fact that he published the book under his own name, not as Mayne--which stands as a marker of sorts for the early bravery of gay authors in what amounts to a public outing.

Stevenson continued writing through the twenties and thirties but mostly in the field of music. His ''Long-Haired Iopas: Old Chapters from Twenty-Five Years of Music Criticism'', privately published in 1927, surprised him for the recognition it unexpectedly received. By World War II he had retreated into his last hotel in Lausanne, and died on July 23, 1942.

Stevenson's work remains unfortunately hard to find. While ''Imre'' and several short stories have been republished, the bulk of his extensive output remains housed in libraries and elusive to all but the most dogged pursuers. Interest in this pioneer of American gay writing continues to grow, however, and one sees that his contributions to homosexual literary history will eventually see the light of day.