LOVE'S COMING OF AGE

Carpenter, Edward

Published by Labour Press, Manchester, 1896

First edition of this early, though veiled, defense of homosexuality, the book that paved the way for Carpenter's revolutionary follow-up, AN UNKNOWN PEOPLE (1897). An early argument for sexual liberation and equality by the pacifist, feminist, sandal-wearing socialist, and all-round Victorian radical Edward Carpenter, published 11 years after the Labouchere Amendment criminalized "gross indecency" between men and just a year after Oscar Wilde was tried and convicted under that law. Though periodically forgotten and revived by historians and biographers, Carpenter was enormously influential on the major figures of 20th century LGBT activism: Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Society and the Radical Faeries, described an early reading of Carpenter as "an earth-shaking revelation" that gave him insight into his own identity. Carpenter was a correspondent and reputed lover of Walt Whitman, and thereby according to Allen Ginsberg a crucial link in the unbroken chain of "gay succession" that connected Ginsberg to Whitman through the intermediaries of Neal Cassady, Gavin Arthur, and finally Carpenter himself. Carpenter was also connected directly or indirectly with many other major literary figures of his time: reviewed by Oscar Wilde, acquainted with Havelock Ellis, and friend of George Bernard Shaw. Most notably, E.M. Forster's visit with Carpenter at his Derbyshire home directly inspired the central love affair in MAURICE: a brief touch from George Merrill, Carpenter's partner, "seemed to go straight through the small of my back into my [Forster's] ideas." Carpenter's arguments in this book combine a palpably Victorian sense of aesthetics and ideals with a remarkably modern line of appeal: "Central to the book was a celebration of the body, based upon a more open approach to sexuality. Carpenter wanted to liberate the body and sex from the shame in which both were cloaked. [.] The pleasure of the body was the foundation of a regenerated body politic [.] a private manifestation of a public good, fellowship [.] The body was, in this way, a vehicle of political change" (Brooke 20). While Carpenter was ostensibly making an argument for heterosexual liberation, the implication (and subtext) of his logic which would be make explicit in the following year's UNKNOWN PEOPLE are clear: "Surely it is not too much to suppose that a reasonable society will be capable of [having] the sense to recognize and establish the innumerable and delicate distinctions of relation which build up the fabric of a complex social organism. It will understand perhaps that sincere Love is, as we have said, a real fact and its own justification, and that however various or anomalous or unusual may be the circumstances and combinations under which it appears, it demands and has to be treated by society with the utmost respect and reverence as a law unto itself, probably the deepest and most intimate law of human life, which only in the most exceptional cases if at all, may public institutions venture to interfere with." Carpenter's thesis is built on a foundation of women's equality, and he credits modern women with changing not only the nature of marriage but the societal understanding of love itself, such that same-sex unions can be clearly seen as natural and inevitable the mutually reinforcing nature of LGBTQ and women's rights. Though Carpenter would expand and refine his ideas in later books, this early work remains an unapologetic and unyielding argument for freedom. It was quite popular in its day, going through at least several editions well into the 20th century. But the first edition remains elusive. A rare and pioneering work of human sexuality. 7.5'' x 5''. Original blue-gray board with gilt titles and publisher's blindstamp. Patterned pictorial endpapers. [8], 172 pages. Spine toned, slight lean. Some soiling and rippling to cloth; wear at corners. Overall, sound. Seller Inventory # 55155

Bibliographic Details

Title: LOVE'S COMING OF AGE
Publisher: Labour Press, Manchester
Publication Date: 1896
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very good.
Edition: First printing.