![]() ![]() More than the story of one remarkable man, Secret Historian is a moving portrait of homosexual life long before Stonewall and gay liberation. Until today he has been known only as Phil Sparrow-but an extraordinary archive of his papers, lost since his death in 1993, has provided Justin Spring with the material for an exceptionally compassionate and brilliantly illuminating life-and-times biography. ![]() During the early 1960s, after a stint at the official tattoo artist for Oakland’s Hells Angels Motorcycle gang, Steward changed his name and identity yet again, this time to write exceptionally literate, upbeat pro-homosexual pornography under the pseudonym Phil Andros.Īlong the way he contributed pioneering homophile journalism to European and American magazines and reviews. Toklas, and Thornton Wilder, but after seventeen years as a University professor he decided to leave the world of academe to become instead “Phil Sparrow,” a tattoo artist on Chicago’s notorious South State Street. As a poet, scholar, and literary novelist he became an intimate friend of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Born in Southeastern Ohio, Samuel Steward maintained a very active sex life from adolescence onwards, and documented these life-experiences in brilliantly vivid detail. Steward, Secret Historian is a sensational reconstruction of one of the more extraordinary hidden lives of the twentieth century. In examining the many social challenges faced by Samuel Steward, a gifted underground writer of homosexual erotica whose life spanned the better part of the 20th century, biographer Justin Spring will trace the course of Steward’s life from the Jazz Age through World War II, the McCarthy Era, the early years of sexual liberation, Stonewall, the AIDs crisis, and its aftermath.ĭrawing upon secret, never-before-seen diaries, journals, and sexual records of the novelist, poet, and university professor Samuel M. Recent incidents of bullying on several college and university campuses across the USA have prompted leaders and educators to look at the question of sexual identity and its relation to individual self-esteem. Lownes Room, John Hay Library, 20 Prospect Street, Brown University, Providence, RI ![]() LECTURE, BOOK SIGNING AND RECEPTION: Tuesday, November 9, 2010. Author Justin Spring discusses the issue of gay self-esteem in relation to his biography, Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist and Sexual Renegade. ![]()
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