For copyright reasons, this edition is available only in the US and Canada.

Winner of the 2003 Silver Medal for Gay/Lesbian Fiction, ForeWord Magazine

Imre is one of the first openly gay American novels with a happy ending. Described by the author as "a little psychological romance," the narrative follows two men who meet by chance in a café; in Budapest, where they forge a friendship that leads to a series of mutual revelations and gradual disclosures. With its sympathetic characterizations of homosexual men, Imre's 1906 publication marked a turning point in English literature. 

This edition includes material relating to the novels origins, contemporary writings on homosexuality, other writings by Prime-Stevenson, and a contemporary review.

Comments:

"Like Whitman's noiseless, patient spider, Prime-Stevenson's homosexual characters spin out threads of mutual recognition and loving affirmation. An invaluable literary document, Imre is also an unexpectedly absorbing fiction, here accompanied by an excellent scholarly apparatus." - John W. Crowley, editor of Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard

"Not only are we given Prime-Stevenson's text in the most readable form it has ever enjoyed, but also an eloquent introduction that illuminates both the life of this mysterious author and the historical and literary significance of this, his most important work, and a fascinating sequence of appendices. This edition is a piece of scholarship as exciting as it is rigorous." - David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell, editors of Pages Passed From Hand to Hand: The Hidden Tradition of Literature in English from 1748 to 1914  

"This edition shows how carefully the novel is positioned geographically at the very margins of Europe at the very end of the Belle Époque, and hownearly a century after its compositionthe novel not only has a good deal to say about its day, but also our own." - David Bergman, Towson University, author of Gaiety Transfigured

James Gifford is a Professor of Humanities at Mohawk Valley Community College, Utica, NY. He is the author of Daynefords Library: American Homosexual Writing 1900-1913 (University of Massachusetts Press, 1995).

Academics please note that this is a title classified as having a restricted allocation of complimentary copies. While the availability of bound complimentary copies is restricted to desk copies only, electronic complimentary copies are readily available for those professors wishing to consider this title for possible course adoption. Should you choose to adopt the book after viewing an electronic copy we will be happy to provide a bound desk copy.

Table of Contents: [Back to Top]

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Edward Prime-Stevenson: A Brief Chronology

A Note on the Text

Imre: A Memorandum

Appendix A: On the Origin of Imre

Appendix B: The Medical Establishment and Homosexuality—A Sample Case Study

Appendix C: Homosexuality and the Artistic Temperament

Appendix D: Excerpts from The Intersexes (1908)

Appendix E: From Life to Fiction

Appendix F: "The Most Peculiar Friend I Have Ever Had"

Appendix G: A Contemporary review of Imre

Works Cited and Recommended Reading