Romantic Genius: The Prehistory of a Homosexual Role

Surprisingly little has been written about homosexuality in British Romantic writing, and, similarly, little discussion has emerged about homosexual themes in the lives and poetic careers of the major Romantics. In Romantic Genius, Andrew Elfenbein explores the correspondence between the stereotypes applied to the genius and those applied to the homosexual, showing the centrality of disreputable desires to the works of Romantic male authors — from William Beckford to Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Blake — as well as to the writings of lesser-known but equally significant female authors of the period.

Explores the early history, during the 18th and 19th centuries, of the myth of an intimate connection between homosexuality and genius, which perseveres in some circles through the 20th. Considers such dimensions as William Beckford and the genius of consumption, Anne Damer's Sapphic potential, genius and the Blakean ridiculous, Cowper and the rise of the suburban man, and pornography and genius.
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