Italian Invert

Michael Rosenfeld holds two doctorates, one in French literature and civilization from the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle–Paris 3 and one in French language and literature from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.William A. Peniston is the librarian and archivist emeritus at the Newark Museum of Art, as well as a historian of France. His books include Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris (2004).Nancy Erber is professor emerita of modern languages and literature at the City University of New York. With Peniston, she edited and translated Queer Lives: Men’s Autobiographies from Nineteenth-Century France (2007).

• List of IllustrationsPrologue, by Cyrille Zola-PlaceForeword to the French Edition, by Alain PagèsForeword to the American Edition, by Vernon A. RosarioIntroduction: The Ménage-à-Trois of Zola, Saint-Paul, and the Italian “Invert,” by Michael Rosenfeld with Nancy ErberPart I: The Confessions of a Homosexual to Émile ZolaPreface by Émile ZolaThe Novel of an InvertThe Sequel to the Novel of an InvertOther ParticularitiesThe Italian Man’s Family Tree, by Michael RosenfeldPart II: Selected Works by Dr. Georges Saint-PaulDr. Georges Saint-Paul, Man of Science, by Clive ThomsonFirst Edition (1896)In Memoriam: Émile ZolaSecond Edition (1910)Third Edition (1930)AcknowledgmentsBibliographyList of ContributorsIndex

A brilliant archival discovery, a triumph of careful scholarship, an unsuspected episode in modern literature, a moving testimony about sex and love, and a fascinating, previously censored chapter in the history of sexuality. Rosenfeld masterfully restores the context in which conscious writing about homosexuality emerged in Europe during the last decades of the nineteenth century.