Friday, June 25, 2010

Rictor Norton


Rictor Norton born 25 June 1945

Rictor Norton, PhD, is an American-born author, social and literary historian and writer, specialising in gay history.

Rictor Norton was born in New York. He gained a BA from Florida Southern College in 1967, and a PhD from Florida State University in 1972. His doctoral dissertation was on homosexual themes in English Renaissance literature. He worked as an lecturer at Florida State University from 1970-72, where he taught a course on gay and lesbian literature in 1971, one of the earliest gay courses in the United States. He was an active member of the Gay Liberation Front from 1971-72, and was involved in campaigning for the repeal of Florida's sodomy statute.

In 1973, he moved to London, UK, where he has lived since, working as a journalist, publisher, researcher and freelance scholar. He worked as a research editor for the fortnightly London newspaper Gay News from 1974 to 1978. He wrote articles on gay history and literature for publications such as Gay Sunshine and The Advocate throughout the 1970s, and for Gay Times later.

Norton's first book grew out of his PhD thesis on homosexuality in English Renaissance Literature. It was published as The Homosexual Literary Tradition (1972).

Norton has published many academic articles in literary journals in the US and UK. He has also contributed to Sex Doctors and Sex Crimes, a contributor of entries to Who's Who in Gay & Lesbian History (Routledge, 2001) and a contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

His recent work includes Mother Clap's Molly House (1992; 2nd edition 2006), a history of the Molly House in England, and The Myth of the Modern Homosexual, a critique of social constructionism and the Foucauldian model of sexuality. His work My Dear Boy (1998) edits sixty sets of love letters from men to other men throughout history, from Ancient Rome to Twentieth-century America.

He maintains an extensive website on Gay History and Literature, with large subsections on Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook and on the 'father of gay history' John Addington Symonds, as well as a non-gay site on Early Eighteenth-Century Newspaper Reports: A Sourcebook.

In December 2005 he formed a civil partnership with his partner of thirty years.

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