1919 novel by Henry Blake Fuller
Bertram Cope's Year is a 1919 novel by Henry Blake Fuller, sometimes called the first American homosexual novel.
Publication and reception.
Fuller completed work on the novel in May 1918. After failing to interest several New York publishing houses, Fuller placed the novel with his friend Ralph Fletcher Seymour who ran a small publishing house in Chicago, Alderbrink Press, that usually published art books. It appeared in October 1919. The novel is sometimes described as "self-published."
The novel received little attention from literary periodicals when it first appeared and was poorly understood; sales were slight. "New Outlook" printed a short notice that concluded: "The study of this weak but agreeable man is subtle but far from exciting." The American Library Association's "Booklist" described it as "A story of superficial social university life in a suburb of Chicago, with live enough people and a sense of humor hovering near the surface."
H. L. Mencken, writing in the "Smart Set" described Cope as beset with three female suitors and "somewhat heavily patronized" by Randolph. Cope fails to benefit from the efforts of Mrs. Phillips and Randolph and "even forgets to be grateful...It is simply beyond him to imagine that he needs help...A very fair piece of writing as novels go. A bit sly and "pizzicato"; even a bit distinguished. If you know the later novels of E. F. Benson, you know the tone of it." Mencken noted how different the novel was from some of Fuller's earlier work, novels that "launched realism in America." In the author of "Bertram Cope's Year" he found "a pleasant style, an adept technique, the manner of a gentleman." It concluded: "It is surely something to be an American novelist, and yet write like a gentleman."
London's "The Bookman" included the novel in a section of short reviews under the heading "Good Novels of Several Kinds." After summarizing the plot as the tale of a young academic who is the object of the "pathetically burning interest" of an older woman and an older man, the latter "the sort of wistful elderly parasite to be found in any college community," the review recommended it for certain readers: "The kind of novel which must be enjoyed not for its matter so much as for its quality, its richness of texture and subtlety of atmosphere. It has distinction, is as finely wrought in its way as a Howells novel or a Cable. It would be extremely irritating to the customer looking for a rattling good tale."
A few years later, in 1924, John Chipman Farrar, early in his illustrious publishing career, was enthusiastic:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;It may be said that "Bertram Cope's Year", in so far as it was read and understood at all, shocked Mr. Fuller's friends so painfully that they silenced it into limbo. It is a story, delicately done with the most exquisite taste, of a sublimated irregular affection...[T]hough it was filled with dynamite scrupulously packed, it fell as harmless as a dud, only to be whispered about here and there by grave people who wondered why Mr. Fuller should choose such a theme.
Carl Van Vechten wrote in 1926 that the subject, "generally taboo in English literature," could only be addressed when handled in the style Fuller adopted, "so skilful, so delicate, so studiously restrained, which he termed "ironic comedy": 
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;If Theodore Dreiser had written this book, it would certainly have been suppressed. If Ben Hecht had written it, he would probably be languishing in jail. I cannot, indeed, name another American writer who could have surveyed the ambiguous depths of the problem presented so thoroughly , and at the same time so discreetly...[I]t would probably prove unreadable to one who had no key to its meaning. Once its intention is grasped, however, it becomes one of the most brilliant and glowingly successful of this author's brief series of works.
Roger Austen's 1977 survey of American gay literature faulted Fuller for a lack of candor due to his "pose that all of these gay or semi-gay relationships were something that he himself knew nothing about." By contrast, Andrew Solomon's evaluation accompanying the novel's republication in 1998 praises the novel for depicting "normative homosexuality--discreet, occasional, often unfulfilled, neither delirious nor unbearable," breaking with the traditional depictions of the homosexual as either shameful or theatrical. He cited the novel's "exquisite understatement" and Fuller's "beautifully balanced irony on the subject closest to his heart." In his view, "The novel treads gently around the edge of the erotic" and allows its homosexual characters to "move with moderate ease in a largely straight world." Cope and Arthur enjoy "the minor and comic troubles of essentially rather pleasurable and straightforward male domesticity."
Upon its republication in 1998, it received enthusiastic reviews. Other modern assessments and characterizations vary from "daring" to "rather campy."
A 2004 description of its theme says that when the novel appeared "its gay theme...although never fully specified, was recognizable. Today...the theme seems positively advertised."
A definitive critical edition of the novel appeared in 2010, and reprints for the first time a recently discovered passage of several handwritten pages that Fuller intended to add to the novel shortly after its initial publication. This indispensable edition supersedes that of Turtle Point Press because it includes helpful annotations and a series of appendices that include Fuller's letters, diary entries, book reviews, and other writings that contain homosexual themes. The introduction by Joseph Dimuro, a UCLA English professor, situates the novel within the corpus of Fuller's other work, discusses its place in an emerging gay culture, and offers revisionary readings of the novel's modern significance.
Summary.
The story is set in the present on the campus of a university in fictional Churchton, Illinois, modeled on Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where Bertram Cope, an attractive young English instructor, is spending a year completing his thesis. While he has a certain sophistication, he is socially unaware, easily impressed by the wealthy and their comforts. Lacking confidence, Cope is too careful and self-conscious as he tries to find his place in local society. Cope becomes the elusive object of desire, either social or sexual or some combination of the two, for an older woman, two older men, and three young women. Cope's primary emotional attachment is to his college chum Arthur Lemoyne, who comes to live with him. Their relationship appears to end after Lemoyne, acting the female part in a play, makes a physical advance backstage that offends another male student.
Themes.
Fuller never uses the word "homosexual." The narrator is as discreet as the characters. Cope is called "no squire of dames".(10) He comments on social dancing:(61-2)
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;You know my views on round dances. Why dancing should be done exclusively by couples on the basis of contrasted sexes...! I think of the good old days of the Renaissance in Italy, when women, if they wanted to dance, just got up and danced–alone, or, if they didn't want to dance alone, danced together. I like to see soldiers or sailors dance in pairs, as a straightforward outlet for superfluous energy.
Cope muses on the roles men and women are expected to play:(87)
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;Of course, there is no more reason for assuming that every man will make a good lover than that every woman will make a good mother or a good housekeeper. Or that every adult male will make a good citizen...I don't feel that I'm an especially creditable one. So it runs. We ground our general life on theories, and then the facts come up and slap us in the face.
There are two unmistakable references to homosexuality. Cope and Arthur, now living together in a single room, celebrate the end of Cope's engagement to Amy. As they return from an evening stroll, Arthur puts his arm around Cope's shoulder: "and Urania, through the whole width of her starry firmament, looked down kindly upon a happier household."(232) "Uranian" was the term adopted in the Victorian era for comradely love and, ultimately, male homosexuality. When the couple attend an evening at Mrs. Phillips, Joe Foster is disgusted at the way one keeps putting his hand on the other's shoulder and he makes the sexual component explicit by comparing it to the inappropriate behavior of a newlywed couple who forget themselves in public and must be reprimanded for bringing "the manners of the bed-chamber into the drawing-room."(221)
Many passages are open to multiple readings. For example, after Cope swims vigorously and Randolph joins him to bob in the water, the narrator says: "Ceremonially, at least, the rite was complete." Something implied but unspecified did not occur. Cope later recalls his day: "He had had a good swim, if but a brief one, with a companion who had been willing, even if not bold." The action that Randolph was willing but not bold enough to undertake is not specified. Hortense, once she realizes Cope has no interest in her or the other girls, warns him against Arthur, revealing that she sees the relationship Cope maintains with Arthur as an alternative, in some sense equivalent, to a heterosexual engagement. In an age when literary convention respected intense male relationships, she labels this one "that preposterous friendship." Of a fourteen-year-old boy who has provided entertaining companionship, Joe muses: "If I had had a boy, I should have wanted him just like Dick."
Other references are oblique and may simply serve to keep the subject in the reader's awareness. Cope calls tea with three girls "an afternoon in Lesbos."(30) Usage of words like "gay," "queer," "drag," and "closet" may or may not be coded references to homosexuality as well.
Fuller addresses other issues in passing. With reference to political interference with academic freedom, an issue of great concern during World War I, he describes (through Randolph) how college trustees are "hard...on Free Speech" which is sometimes "mauled," though the greatest risks are in "Sociology or Economics."(113) With respect to literary criticism, he complains (through Cope) that "It irks me to find more praise bestowed on the praised-enough,–even on groups of secondary importance, sometimes just because they are remote (in England, perhaps), and so can be treated with an easy objectivity. To dig in your own day and your own community is harder..."(114) A monthly poetry magazine is praised as one "which did not scorn poets because they happened to live in the country in which it was published."(244)
Synopsis.
The time is the present. Following some time teaching in Winnebago, Wisconsin, Bertram Cope, 24, arrives at the university to spend a year as an instructor in English literature. Living modestly, he cultivates the society of the well-to-do middle-aged with fine homes. At an afternoon tea, he makes a favorable impression on Mrs. Medora Phillips, the wealthy widow of an art dealer, and Basil Randolph, an "academic manqué," a stockbroker and a collector of books and curiosities. Phillips sees Cope as an interesting addition to her salons. Randolph sees him as a candidate for mentoring. Cope visits Mrs. Phillips at home and she continues a conversational style Cope describes as "pretending to quarrel as a means of entertaining you."(24) Although Cope says little of note and sings several airs without distinction, he is judged favorably. Mrs. Phillips teases him for lacking any interest in the girls she introduces to him. Randolph, who occasionally entertains undergraduates "who readily forgot and quickly dropped you,"(40) researches Cope's background and discusses him with Mrs. Phillips, concluding that Cope has "more than one touch of gentility."(42) Randolph visits Mrs. Phillips' wheelchair-using tenant, Joe Foster, her late husband's half-brother, and learns that she imagines Cope may prove a match for one of the three girls who live in her house, Amy, Hortense, and Carolyn. From his quarters upstairs, Joe heard Cope's singing and was impressed enough to want to learn more of Cope. When Mrs. Phillips invites Randolph to a young people's dinner that will include Cope, he feels "a slight stir of elation."(54)
Cope describes Mrs. Phillips' dinner, the fine house and its appointments. He thought Randolph was especially attentive to him at dinner and that Joe found him boisterous: "He must have fancied me (from the racket I was making) as a sort of free-and-easy Hercules..., if not as the whole football squad rolled into one." Cope tried not to shake Joe's hand too vigorously, but Joe "took all