Cecil Dreeme

“Cecil Dreeme defies easy categorization. A mid-19th century queer/trans* novel, it mixes genres and perversities as it delights in combining Whitmanesque rhapsody with gothic dread, Wildean cosmopolitan seductions with very American scenes. This beguiling literary treasure provides us all with material for queer pleasure and pedagogy.” - Lisa Duggan,New York University “A story of treachery and tenderness,Cecil Dreemedescribes the spiritual struggles of an impressionable young American returned from Europe to the all-male haunts of lower Manhattan. This timely reprint of the popular nineteenth-century novel recalls the queer, Gothic past of the U.S. nation-state. Peter Coviellos lively introduction describes the ambiguous pleasures of ardent comradeship in a shifting erotic and political landscape.” - Heather Love,author of Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History “Cecil Dreemeis more than a great New York novel. It is also a key text for anybody interested in the history of gender and queerness in American thoughtnot just thought that has taken place on these shores, but the history of ideas precisely about this nation itself, its values, and its direction in history.” (Public Books) “Cecil Dreemeis remarkable, compelling, and completely unclassifiable…This prophetic and rich novel whose very existence must be seen as surprising against the backdrop of 21st century skepticism as to the possibility of ‘gay’ literature in pre-modern times. It deserves the widest possible readership.” (The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review)

Theodore Winthrop (1828–1861) was a lawyer, writer, and world traveler. Cecil Dreeme is a semi-autobiographical novel, set in Washington Square and at the New York University Building where Winthrop had once been a lodger. He is also the author of the novels John Brent and Edwin Brothertoft and the travel narratives The Canoe and the Saddle and Life in the Open Air.

Peter Coviello is Department Head and Professor of English at the University of Illinois Chicago. He is the author of five books, including Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism (UChicago Press, 2019) and Tomorrow’s Parties (NYU, 2013). His work Is There God After Prince? is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press in 2023.

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