He is also remembered as the writer of gay erotic fiction under the pen name of Phil Andros.Įach personal essay is annotated by Mulderig and includes footnotes that help place the essays in historical, cultural, and biographical context. Steward wrote many articles and stories for the pioneering Swiss gay magazine Der Kreis as well as for the Danish gay magazines Eos and Amigo.
In the early 1950’s Steward met Alfred Kinsey, the famous sex researcher, and committed himself to his own form of sex research by keeping a “Stud File” card catalog on all his sexual adventures Stein’s death in 1946 was a huge blow to Steward’s psyche. He corresponded and visited with Stein and Alice Toklas for many years. Stein, though, was Steward’s greatest champion and mentor. Steward, in later life, went on to befriend numerous gay artists and writers including Paul Cadmus, George Platt Lynes, Julien Green, Fritz Peters, and Glenway Wescott. Steward counted Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder among his friends and, while in Europe, he also met with Andre Gide, Thomas Mann, and Lord Alfred Douglas.
Samuel Steward earned a PhD in English from Ohio State University and held over the course of his life several academic posts including professorships at Loyola University and later at DePaul University. The essays show Samuel Steward’s development as a writer and a gay sophisticate, from the early essays which centered awkwardly on dentistry from the patient’s perspective, to a wider range of topics–bodybuilding, cryptography, psychiatry, espionage, opera, pet cemeteries, Gertrude Stein, Chicago, and Paris. Thirty of the overall fifty-six essays published are included, authored under the alias of Philip Sparrow. It is all the more remarkable considering they were published in the obscure Illinois Dental Journal between the years of 19 penned at the request of its editor, Dr. The personal essays in this collection are written from a queer perspective at a time when censorship and homophobia were rampant. How wonderful that Jeremy Mulderig has reclaimed these lost gems of gay writing. ‘Philip Sparrow Tells All’ by Samuel Steward
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