Queer Lives - Men's Autobiographies from Nineteenth-Century France (Electronic book text)

Eight gay men wrote their autobiographies in French between 1845 and 1905; some of them reflected on their childhood, adolescence, and adulthood,others provided brief impressions of their loves and desires. A few of them dramatized their lives following contemporary theatrical and fictional models, while others wrote for medical doctors, who used the men's writings as case studies to illustrate their theories on sexual deviance. In some instances the doctors extensive interpretations cannot be separated from the men's own stories, but in others the authors speak for themselves.