Volume 32, Number 20 · December 19, 1985
Subversive Activities
By Bernard Knox
Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in Nineteenth-Century England
by Louis Crompton
University of California Press, 419 pp., $24.95
The nearest English equivalent of the word Herodotus used to describe his account of the Persian War and its antecedents, historiai, is 'enquiries'; the Greek verb historein means 'to ask questions.' In recent years history has begun to ask questions about people it once took little or no notice of; to concern itself, for example, with 'the short and simple annals of the poor' and the 'destiny obscure' of the neglected and oppressed. The history of blacks in America has become a flourishing academic industry, that of women all over the world and throughout the centuries an even wider field of research and publication, and 'gay history,' of which Crompton's book is a distinguished specimen, seems, to judge from the wealth of literature cited in his footnotes, to be following in their wake.
Review, 3702 words
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