Expanding our understanding of the possibilities and challenges inherent in the expression of same-sex desire, Greven identifies a pattern of what he calls 'gender protest' in the writings of Margaret Fuller, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. As Greven shows, antebellum authors took up the taboo subjects of same-sex desire and female sexuality and were adept in their use of a variety of rhetorical means for expressing the inexpressible.

David Greven is Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. His other books include The Fragility of Manhood, Psycho-Sexual, and Men Beyond Desire.

Introduction; Chapter 1 Phallic Images; Chapter 2 Ligeia's Lament; Chapter 3 New Girls and Bandit Brides; Chapter 4 No Country for Melancholy Young Men; Chapter 5 American Shudders; Chapter 6 Hester is Burning;