Charles Warren Stoddard

Charles Warren Stoddard (1843-1909) was an American novelist and travel writer. Born in Rochester, New York, he was raised in a prominent family in New York City. In 1855, he moved with his parents to San Francisco, where Stoddard began wriing poems. He found publication in The Golden Era in 1862, embarking on a long career as a professional writer. Two years later, he traveled to the South Sea Islands for the first time. While there, he befriended Father Damien, now a Catholic saint, and wrote his South-Sea Idylls, which were praised by literary critic William Dean Howells. After converting to Catholicism in 1867, he began his career as a travel writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, journeying to Europe, Egypt, and Palestine over the next five years. In 1885, he took a position as the chair of the University of Notre Dame's English department, but was forced to resign when officials learned of his homosexuality. Throughout his career, Stoddard praised the openness of Polynesian societies to homosexual relationships and corresponded with such pioneering gay authors as Herman Melville and Walt Whitman. Primarily a poet and journalist, Stoddard's lone novel, For the Pleasure of His Company: An Affair of the Misty City (1903) is considered a semi-autobiographical account of his life as a young writer in San Francisco. Among his lovers was the young Japanese poet Yone Noguchi, who moved to San Francisco in his youth and became a protégé of Stoddard and the poet Joaquin Miller. Recognized today as a pioneering member of the LGBTQ community, Stoddard is an important figure of nineteenth century American literature whose work is due for reassessment from scholars and readers alike.