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Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love, and Scandal in Wilde Times, by Morris B. Kaplan; pp. 314. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005, $35.00, £19.95.
Morris Kaplan opens Sodom on the Thames with a first-person account of his decision to embark on this study of late-nineteenth-century homosexuality, interspersed with a discussion of the sources that he has brought together in order to make it possible. Many of the individuals, events, and themes touched on in these first pages will be familiar to scholars of the period and topic, but it is in their arrangement and interpretation that Kaplan stakes his best and ultimately successful claims for the originality and importance of his work.
In the introduction Kaplan informs the reader that what follows will be a narrative history, and he expresses his hope that this "return to storytelling" will be welcomed by some readers "impatient with the obscurity of 'postmodern' theory" (7). The emphasis on narrative is evident in part one, which details the lives of Ernest Boulton and Frederick Park, two young middle-class cross-dressers arrested in 1870 and tried for conspiracy to commit sodomy. Kaplan's account brings together almost all of the major themes and events described in the surviving trial documentation, making it the most comprehensive overview of this well-known case in the secondary literature. In the narrative, the reader is introduced to the extravagant behaviors of these young men and their friends, the dresses they wore on and off the stage, and...