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'I love thee... once more helpless, and therewith hopeless!--but this time no longer silent, before the Friendship which is Love, the Love which is Friendship.'Considered one of the first examples of the 'homosexual' novel, Edward Prime-Stevenson's
Imre: A Memorandum takes the reader to the almost Arcadian capital of Hungary, where a seemingly chance encounter brings together Englishman Oswald and dashing Hungarian officer Imre. From the initial stages of their friendship, there is no doubt on Oswald's part that this is love at first sight. But will Imre return Oswald's feelings? Will they dare to let their guard down-the figurative 'Mask' that has become second nature to them? Heavily indebted to the newly established classificatory science of sexualities,
Imre offers a thrilling and heart-rending account of the relationship between two super-virile men at the turn of the twentieth century.
This edition presents an authentic version of the text that preserves the author's orthographical and other eccentricities, and opens the door to the sexological subtext that propels the plot. Also included is one of Prime-Stevenson's dramatic short stories, 'The Lady with the Madonna-Face', in which Imre returns.
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List of contents
- Introduction
- Note on the Text
- Select Bibliography
- A Chronology of Edward Prime-Stevenson
- IMRE: A MEMORANDUM
- Appendix: 'The Lady with the Madonna-Face'
- Explanatory Notes
About the author
Zsolt Bojti teaches in the Department of English Studies at ELTE E^"otvös Loránd University (Budapest, Hungary) and is editor-in-chief to the Department's scholarly journal,
The AnaChronisT. His research focuses on the intersection of nineteenth-century German sexology and the English literary history of sexuality at the turn of the century. His first monograph,
Queer Reading Practices and Sexology in Fin-de-Siècle Literature: Wilde, Stenbock, Prime-Stevenson, was published with Routledge in 2025.
S. Brooke Cameron is Associate Professor at Queen's University (Kingston, Canada). Much of her research focuses on gender and economic themes in nineteenth-century and
fin-de-siècle literature. She has also recently turned her attention to children's literature, as well as popular horror (including Vampire Studies). She authored
Critical Alliances: Economics and Feminism in English Women's Writing, 1880-1914 (2020) and co-edited
The Vampire in Nineteenth-Century Literature: A Feast of Blood (2022).
