Bayard Taylor

#2

Bayad Taylor wrote the first American gay novel, but the nineteenth century book--Joseph and His Friend--is often unknown to contemporary readers of queer fiction. Author and researcher L.A. Fields seeks to remedy this with her newest release. The notes accompanying each chapter of this book move from the private life of the man who inspired the story (Halleck), through the secrets of its author (Taylor), noting especially his private love for and public rivalry with Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass). The notes then expand on Whitman's unique position in gay and American history: the nascent coming-out letters Whitman called ''avowals'' from the likes of Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde; Whitman's witnessing of the Civil War, the Lincoln presidency, and his lover's chance attendance at Ford's Theater the night of Lincoln's assassination; as well as Whitman's own understanding and defense for writing honestly about the love of men. The structure of the project combines Taylor's original 1870 novel with brief strings of American history, contemporary anecdote, and curiosities from a more secret history. A new topic is positioned behind every chapter, providing the background that reveals just how important this novel was at the time, how rare it is now, and how daring it's always been to tell the truth.

#3

1854

Bayard Taylor (1825-1878) was already a well-established writer when he traveled to California as special correspondent for the New York Tribune in the summer of 1849. On his return to New York, Taylor established himself not only as one of America's great travel writers but as a true man of letters, producing distinguished novels and poems as well as nonfiction for the next quarter century. Eldorado (1850) consists of Taylor's rewritten dispatches to his paper. Volume 2 tells of the 1849 elections, horseback tours of the Sierras, gold camps on the Mokelumne River, analysis of the 1849 overland emigration, San Francisco social and cultural life, and a return to the East with stops in Guadalajara, Mazatlàn, Mexico City, Popcateptel, and Vera Cruz. Thomas Butler King's official report on California, 22 March 1850, is printed as an appendix.