"The Man Who Thought Himself a Woman" and Other Queer Nineteenth-Century Short Stories / Christopher Looby.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: Queer Short Stories in Nineteenth-Century America -- Editor’s Note -- Part I. Queer Places -- The Child’s Champion (1841) -- A South-Sea Idyl (1869) -- The Haunted Valley (1871) -- Felipa (1876) -- My Lorelei: A Heidelberg Romance (1880) -- Part II. Queer Genders -- The Bachelors (1836) -- The Man Who Thought Himself a Woman (1857) -- Two Friends (1887) -- How Nancy Jackson Married Kate Wilson (c. 1900–1903) -- Paul’s Case: A Study in Temperament (1905) -- Part III. Queer Attachments -- Twin-Love (1871) -- Out of the Deeps (1872) -- In the Tules (1895) -- Martha’s Lady (1897) -- The Heart’s Desire (1908) -- Part IV. Queer Things -- I and My Chimney (1856) -- The Candy Country (1885) -- Dave’s Neckliss (1889) -- Schopenhauer in the Air (1894) -- Lilacs (1896) -- Notes -- Acknowledgments

"Perhaps it is no coincidence that the nineteenth century—the century when, it has been said, sexuality as such (and various taxonomized sexual identities) were invented—is the period when American short stories were invented, and when they were the queerest."—Christopher Looby, from the Introduction A man in small-town America wears the clothing of his wife and sisters; satisfied at last that he has "a perfect suit of garments appropriate for my sex," he commits suicide, asking only that he be buried dressed as a woman. A country maid has a passionate summer relationship with an heiress, the memory of which sustains her for the next forty years. A girl is carried by a strong wind to a place where she discovers that everything is made of candy, including the "queer people," whom she licks and eats. If these are not the kinds of stories we expect to find in nineteenth-century American literature, it is perhaps because we have been looking in the wrong places. The stories gathered here are written by a diverse assortment of writers—women and men, obscure and famous: Herman Melville, Willa Cather, Henry James, and Louisa May Alcott, among others. Exploring the vagaries of gender identity, erotic desire, and affectional attachments that do not map easily onto present categories of sex and gender, they celebrate, mourn, and question the different modes of embodiment and forgotten styles of pleasure of nineteenth-century America.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed Apr. 18, 2017)