Hubert Kennedy
Hubert Kennedy, PhD, (born 1931) was Professor of Mathematics at Providence College (Rhode Island), where his research interest was the history of mathematics. He then moved to San Francisco, where he continued his historical research, now in the beginnings of the gay movement in Germany. Since 2003 he has been in a home for assisted living in Concord, California. He has over 200 publications in several languages, from an analysis of the mathematical manuscripts of Karl Marx and a revelation of Marx's homophobia, to theoretical genetics and a proof of the impossibility of an organism that requires more than two sexes in order to reproduce. In addition, Dr. Kennedy has written biographies of the Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano and the German homosexual emancipationist/theorist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, and has edited the collected writings of Ulrichs. His translations of the boy-love novels of the German anarchist writer John Henry Mackay and his investigations of the writings of Mackay have helped establish Mackay's place in the gay canon. Dr. Kennedy also translated selections from Der Eigene for the volume Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany, coedited with Harry Oosterhuis, and is the author of The Ideal Gay Man: The Story of Der Kreis.
This site makes available as free ebooks several works by John Henry Mackay, translated by Hubert Kennedy, and some of Kennedy's own works, most importantly the biography of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. To read the ebooks, you will need to download and install the Adobe Acrobat Reader. It is a free download, click here. Alternatively (recommended) you can download Foxit Reader, which is also a free download. To read about it and download, click here.
The photograph of Hubert Kennedy
(above, center) was made by Robert Giard, who
was known for his portraits of gay and lesbian writers. Giard
died on 16 July 2002 at age 62.
From My Life: Autobiography (2009). This is
the frank, unvarnished biography of Hubert Kennedy. Alas, the story ends just
as his life begins to show promise. But what is here is surprisingly
entertaining, with intriguing hints of what-might-have-been. In it we see the
well-known progression from an idealistic youth through painful frustrations to
a realistic maturity—in this case ending with the dawning of a final satisfying
egoism. Previously read by a select few, it is now available to the general
public. For information and how to order a copy, click here.
Note. This book is also available as a Kindle Edition. You can find it here.
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Pioneer of the
Modern Gay Movement (2002),
is a revised and enlarged edition of the biography Kennedy first published in
1988. An effort has been made to include the results of the latest researches.
The text is now 16% longer and 40 illustrations are included. To read the ebook, click here.
An Italian translation of the above ebook is available in a print edition from Massari Editore (click here). Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: Pioniere del moderno movimento gay (2005), translated by Roberto Cruciani, with an introduction by Massimo Consoli, is No. 19 in the "Collana Pensiero Forte". This book was reviewed by Francesco Gnerre in Pride (Rome) in May 2005. To read his review, click here.
The revised German edition of this biography, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: Leben und Werk, was published in 2001 by MännerschwarmSkrip Verlag, Hamburg. For more information, click here.
Les Wright's excellent review of the above biography was published in Journal of Homosexuality (vol. 46, nos. 1/2). To read it, click here.
A second (print) edition of the Ulrichs biography, with the same title as the 2002 ebook, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: Pioneer of the Modern Gay Movement, is now available (from Amazon.com, US$18 - search for it there by ISBN: 1419606980). In addition to all the text of the 2002 ebook, it also includes a surprising amount of material that has appeared since then (including information from three new books dealing with Ulrichs and several articles). It is a large-size book with 308 pages, one picture.
A review by Kennedy of several books about Karl Heinrich Ulrichs is on the premiere web site for Ulrichs information, Celebration 2002. To read it, click here.
Are you curious to see
what Ulrichs’s publications looked like? Want to read
the original of one? Click here
to see a transcription of his first booklet Vindex.
This is not a facsimile, but an effort has been made to make it appear like the
original, with a Fraktur font and Ulrichs’s
original spelling. For ease of reading, the length of the lines has been
changed, but the general appearance and page numbering have been kept.
In addition to the
complete biography of Ulrichs, Kennedy has published
several articles on Ulrichs as well as entries on Ulrichs for reference works:
For a brief, popular introduction to Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, see Kennedy’s article in the European Gay Review
in 1986. To read it click here.
A brief introduction in German was in Biographisches Lexikon für
Ostfriesland in 1997. To read it click
here.
A longer, scholarly article on Ulrichs
is “Karl Heinrich Ulrichs:
First Theorist of Homosexuality” (1997). To read it click here.
In 2004 Kennedy
submitted an article – “Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, an Early
Advocate of Peace and Equality” – to the journal Peace
& Change: A Journal of Peace Research for publication in a “special LGBTQ issue”, hoping it would introduce Ulrichs to a group that might not be aware of him. The
article was rejected by the editors: “Unfortunately, we decided that
yours would not fit as well as others.” Although it has little new for readers
of this web page, it is made available here as submitted, since it does present
Ulrichs from a slightly different viewpoint. To read
it, click here.
Ulrichs’s Latin journal Alaudae
[The Larks] appeared from May 1889 until his death in 1895. It was meant to
promote Latin as an international language and had readers around the globe –
in Egypt, America, Russia, Rumania,… A reprint edited by Wolfram Setz has been published (2004) by MännerschwarmSkript
in Hamburg. It has over 400 pages, including an introduction by the Latinist
Wilfred Stroh. For more information, click here.
In June 1994, Raffaele Colapietra, a native of L’Aquila and formerly a professor of modern history at the University of Salerno, came across an incomplete copy of Ulrich’s journal Alaudae. He published an article about it the following year, being unaware of the gay interest in Ulrichs. His article (in Italian) is available here as a curiosity.
Giuseppe Peano
The corrected Definitive Edition of PEANO: Life and Works of Giuseppe Peano is now available in an attractive print edition that includes numerous illustrations. To read about the book and order a print copy click here. The PDF file of the text is also available as a free download.
In addition to the biography of Giuseppe Peano, Kennedy published a number of articles dealing with particular aspects of his life and work. Most of them are in the collection Twelve Articles on Giuseppe Peano. These articles were originally published in various journals in the years 1963–1984. To read the collection, click here.
Giuseppe Peano, a short biography (44 pages), was published in
Switzerland in 1974 in a German translation by Ruth Amsler.
It is a good introduction to the life and works of Giuseppe Peano.
To read it, click here.
John Henry Mackay
For a brief introduction to John
Henry Mackay (and to Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Heinrich Hössli, and other gay pioneers), see Kennedy's entries in glbtq: an encyclopedia of gay, lesbian,
bisexual, transgender, & queer culture (an excellent online encyclopedia). Click
here for the link to them.
John Henry Mackay’s last book was Abrechnung: Randbemerkungen zu Leben und Arbeit (1932). A new edition with annotations by Kennedy is available from Lulu.com ($6.93). For information and to order click here.
The English translation, Summing Up: Marginal Notes to Life and Work, is now available. To read it, click here.
Fenny Skaller and Other Prose Writings from the Books of the Nameless Love by John Henry Mackay, translated by Hubert Kennedy, was first published in 1988. It is now available as an ebook. To read it, click here. NB. The following item is also part of Sagitta’s Books of the Nameless Love.
Over the Marble Steps: A Scene of the Nameless Love is a very brief one-act play by Mackay. An illustrated edition is available. To read it, click here.
Dear Tucker: The Letters from John Henry Mackay to Benjamin R. Tucker is now available in a new, illustrated edition. To read it, click here.
Anarchist of Love: The Secret Life of John Henry Mackay, first published in 1983 and in an expanded version in 1996, is now an ebook. To read it, click here.
Anarchist der Liebe: John Henry Mackay als Sagitta is the German translation of a 1988 expanded version of Kennedy's Anarchist of Love: The Secret Life of John Henry Mackay. To read it, click here.
Reading John Henry Mackay is a collection of 10 articles by Hubert Kennedy (6 in English and 4 in German). To read it, click here.
An all-English (7 articles) print edition of Reading John Henry Mackay is available from Lulu.com ($6.65). To order it, click here.
The Anarchists: A Picture of Civilization at the Close of the Nineteenth Century is the book that make John Henry Mackay famous. The 1891 English translation by George Schumm is in the Anarchy Archives. To read it, click here.
Kennedy designed a new German edition of Mackay’s Die Anarchisten for the Mackay-Gesellschaft (Berlin/Hamburg). The book, which includes an introduction by Kennedy, is available from print-on-demand Lulu.com. To read about it and order a copy, click here. The PDF file used to make the book is available as a free download.
Print editions of the following
five volumes of Kennedy's translations of writings by John Henry Mackay
are available from Xlibris. For more information and
how to order, click on the title. These
books may also be found on Amazon.com, where Kindle editions of them are also
available. (Suggestion: Search for “John Henry Mackay”.)
1. Shorter Fiction. Contains almost all the short stories and novellas of Mackay.
2. Autobiographical Writings. Contains Summing Up and Dear Tucker (mentioned above).
3. The Swimmer. The story of the rise and fall of a champion swimmer in Berlin, circa 1900. This novel contains some of Mackay’s best writing. (See the description of Der Schwimmer, below.)
4. Three Novels. Contains The People of Marriage, District Attorney Sierlin, and The Imagined World.
5. The Hustler. The story of a teenage hustler in Berlin in the 1920s. Original title: Der Puppenjunge.
Mackay's short novel Die Menschen der Ehe (The People of Marriage, 1892) is a devastating portrait of Saarbrücken, the town where he grew up as a young boy. In it the character Dora Syk is patterned after his friend Gabriele Reuter, who later pictured Mackay in her novel Aus guter Familie (1895). The original German of Die Menschen der Ehe is in Project Gutenberg. To download it, click here.
Mackay's Der Schwimmer: Die Geschichte einer Leidenschaft (1901) is one of the earliest literary sports novels. It is a captivating story with good psychological insight and is also historically important for its picture of competitive swimming and diving in the early years of those sports. The original German is in Project Gutenberg. To download it, click here.
Mackay is also known as the re-discoverer of Max Stirner (1806-1856), and his biography of Stirner is the only one of that 19th-century philosopher of egoism, whose major work was Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum (1844). Kennedy's translation of Mackay's Max Stirner: His Life and His Work, the first translation into English, is available in a print edition from Amazon.com - search for it there by ISBN: 1594579830. This book is also available as a Kindle edition. You can find it here.
Mackay’s brief introduction to Stirner’s book, written in 1927, is also available for the first time in English. To read it, click here.
Kennedy’s article “Richard Strauss and John Henry Mackay” was presented in Thamyris 2 in a typographically very attractive layout by editor Mike Merisi. To read the article, click here.
A print edition of a complete translation of Sagitta's Books of the Nameless Love is now available (US$ 18.- from Amazon.com - search for it there by ISBN: 1419610856). It has a new introduction by Kennedy. The boy-love poems of "Book Five" are given in English and German on facing pages. It is a substantial volume of 350 pages, with several illustrations.
A new print edition of the original German Die Bücher der namenlosen Liebe von Sagitta is now available (325 pages; US$ 18.99; from Amazon.com - search for it there by ISBN: 1419618245). It has a new introduction (in German) by Kennedy.
In 1908 the “Arbeter Fraint” Press in London published a Yiddish translation by Abraham Frumkin of Mackay’s The Anarchists. Rudolf Rocker, the longtime editor of the journal Arbeter Fraint, wrote a preface for it. An English translation of Rocker's preface may be read by clicking here.
Der Unschuldige: Die Geschichte einer Wandlung is a new print edition of Mackay's novella of 1931. It also contains an afterword by Kennedy. It is available from Lulu.com ($6.77). To order the book, click here. Please note that this volume is entirely in German.
Die letzte Pflicht und Albert Schnells Untergang is a new print edition of Mackay's “two-part story” of 1893/1895. It also contains a brief afterword by Kennedy. It is available from Lulu.com ($8.53). To order the book (or download a free PDF file), click here. Please note that this volume is entirely in German.
The Last Duty and Albert Schnell's Downfall is a translation by Kennedy of the above German book. It also contains a brief afterword by Kennedy. It is available from Lulu.com ($9.09). To order the book (or download a free PDF file), click here.
John Henry Mackay (Sagitta): Anarchist der Liebe (296 pp., illustrated). Published by Männerschwarm Verlag (Hamburg), this is more than an enlargement of Kennedy's earlier Anarchist der Liebe. It is a new, complete biography, but with an emphasis on Mackay's writings as Sagitta. In preparing it, Kennedy received much assistance from Wolfram Setz, longtime editor of the series Bibliothek rosa Winkel. Even the reader already familiar with Kennedy's earlier books on Mackay will find much that is new, entertaining, and informative. Of special interest are the extensive quotations from hard-to-find periodicals and other sources. For more information and to order, click here.
Die Menschen der Ehe, by John Henry Mackay. This new edition of Mackay's short novel attacking marriage also includes his one-act play Ehe (on the same theme) and a brief essay by Kennedy discussing Mackay's writings on marriage. It is available from Lulu.com ($6.77). To read about the book and order it (or download a free PDF file), click here.
Der Freiheitsucher, by John Henry Mackay. This edition of the book Mackay thought his best includes an afterword by Kennedy that, among other things, identifies some of the unnamed personalities in the story, notably the scientist-philosopher Ernst Haeckel, whose monism Mackay summarizes. To read about the book and order it (or download a free PDF file), click here.
The Freedomseeker, by John Henry Mackay, translated by Charles and Nora Alexander. This is an English edition of the book above. To read about it and order it (or download a free PDF file), click here.
With the publication in 1888
of two novellas under the collective title Moderne Stoffe (Modern Themes), Mackay became a
pioneer in the German literary movement of naturalism. Mackay’s leading role
has been nearly forgotten, in part due to Mackay’s own rejection of naturalism,
later calling it a “storm in a water glass”. A new edition (in 2011) of
Mackay’s work allows a new evaluation of his literary talent. To order a print
copy or download (free) the ebook (in PDF format),
click here. The
translation, Modern Themes, which has an
afterword by Kennedy, is also there.
Mackay’s last novel Die Gedachte Welt,
only recently published in German, is now available in English as The Imagined World. It has an afterword by
Kennedy. You can read about it and buy a printed copy here. An ebook of the novel (in epub
format) is also available there. (If you wish a free copy of the novel in PDF
format, write to the email address below to request it. You will then be told
how to download it.)
James Mills Peirce
After “coming out” in the post-Stonewall period, Kennedy looked for a gay mathematics professor to write about - and found him in the nineteenth-century Harvard mathematician James Mills Peirce. The results of his research have been collected in Six Articles on James Mills Peirce. To read it, click here.
In 1881 Peirce published a rule for finding the day of the week for any date in the Christian era. Kennedy put this rule into a spreadsheet to make a neat perpetual calendar. You can download it as follows: If you have Microsoft Excel, download here; if you have OpenOffice.org, download here.
Kennedy's fictional biography, Sex and Math in Harvard Yard: The Memoirs of James Mills Peirce, is now in a 2nd, illustrated edition. To read about this charming little Professorenroman, go to Kennedy's Lulu “storefront” (click here) where you can also order a printed copy or download a PDF file of the text.
Other Works of Hubert Kennedy
Homosexuality and Male
Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany: The Youth Movement, the Gay Movement and Male
Bonding Before Hitler’s Rise: Original Transcripts From Der Eigene, the
First Gay Journal in the World (1991),
edited by Harry Oosterhuis. Although Kennedy had only
a minor role in the production of this book, it has been recommended that it be
listed here with a link to the publisher. Professor Oosterhuis
made the selections from Der Eigene and wrote introductory essays for the
several sections of the book. Kennedy's only role was to translate those
selections into English. To read about the book and order a copy, click here.
The Ideal Gay Man: The Story of Der Kreis (1999) tells the history of the Swiss trilingual journal, with generous excerpts from it. For more information and how to order, click on the title.
Der Kreis: Eine Zeitschrift und ihr Programm is the German edition of the book above. It may be ordered from www.gay-books.de. For information, you may also click here.
The short story “Life’s Little Loafer” is Kennedy's attempt to imitate the style of John Henry Mackay (Sagitta). Did he succeed? To read it and find out, click here.
First published in 1976, Coming Out in Providence describes Hubert Kennedy's “coming out”
at Providence College that year and tells how a Congress
James Barr gained prominence in the 1950s with his novel Quatrefoil. The essay A Touch of Royalty: Gay Author James Barr is Kennedy's appreciation of his life and writing. To read it, click here.
Kennedy is inordinately proud of his proof of “the impossibility of an organism that requires more than two sexes in order to reproduce” (as noted in the small print at the top of this page). The proof is in Three Sexes: Essays in Theoretical Genetics. To read it, click here.
After theoretical genetics, Kennedy studied the mathematical manuscripts of Karl Marx. A collection of articles (in English and Russian) is in Negation of the Negation: Karl Marx and Differential Calculus, which is now available in a print edition from Lulu.com that includes several illustrations. To read about the book and order a print copy click here. The PDF file of the text is also available as a free download.
Eight Mathematical Biographies is a collection of short articles, mostly written for the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1970-76). The eight are: Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Cesare Burali-Forti, Alessandro Padoa, Marc-Antoine Parseval des Chênes, Giuseppe Peano, Mario Pieri, Emil Leon Post, Giovanni Vailati. To read the ebook, click here.
Kennedy published some 60 book reviews in gay journals and magazines. Reviews of Seven Gay Classics is a collection of reviews of reprints of older works of special value. Their authors are: Havelock Ellis, John Addington Symonds, John Henry Mackay, Benedict Friedlaender, Erich Bethe, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, and Heinrich Hössli. To read the ebook, click here.
In Memoriam: Five Gay Obituaries contains the five obituaries published by Kennedy. The five are: Glenn Hogan, Mario Mieli, Roger Austen, Peter Schult, and Robert Turner (all but Schult known personally by Kennedy). To read the ebook, click here.
Reviewing Boy-Love and NAMBLA is a collection of eleven book reviews and one conference report. To read the ebook, click here.
Four in Gay History is a collection of articles discussing
four men not included in the special categories above. They are: Fitzroy Davis,
Magnus Hirschfeld, Karol Szymanowski,
and Johann Baptist von Schweitzer. To read the ebook,
click here.
Selected
Gay Book Reviews is
a collection of twelve reviews written in 1980-2001 and originally
published in The Advocate (8), The James White Review
(1), and Journal of Homosexuality (3). To read the ebook, click here.
Reading
Gay History: Selected Essays and Reviews is a print edition containing eight essays and ten book
reviews. To order the book, click here. The PDF file of the text is also available
as a download.
Comments
and suggestions are welcome. Write to hubertk@pacbell.net.
Site
design by Peremptory Designs,
a division of Peremptory Publications
Concord, CA
