All Things Human
New York: Sheridan House, 1949.
First edition, first printing of a salacious early "lost gay novel" written under a pen name by George Sylvester Viereck, prolific poet and fascist propagandist. 383 pp. Bound in publisher's black cloth with spine lettered in yellow. Near Fine, lightly worn, in a Very Good unclipped dust jacket with moderate wear and shallow chipping to crown, rubbing at extremities. A novel with overt homosexual themes about a millionaire, Stuart Kent, who is wrongfully imprisoned for a murder he did not commit and has life-changing gay experiences in prison. Anthony Slide notes in Lost Gay Novels that the book "requires tolerance from the reader. Although, in all honesty, much of it is so outrageous that one cannot help but read on in awe at what the author will come up with next." After his release, Stuart soon yearns to be reunited once again with his young convict lover, Jack, and gets arrested on purpose. Born in Munich to an aristocratic family, Vierick acted as a German agent and propagandist in the US from WWI to WWII, and afterwards stayed in contact with elements of the Nazi diaspora during the early Cold War. In 1933 he traveled to Berlin to personally meet then Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler and gave a speech at Madison Square Garden to over 20,000 Friends of New Germany members. He was indicted in 1941 for a violation against the Foreign Agents Registration Act and spent three years in prison. When not propagandizing and spying, he also was "something of a scandalous poet whose verse dealt with sexual imagery," as Slide notes. He edited an American edition of Oscar Wilde's Panthea and Other Poems and penned a Wildean decadent vampire novel Das Haus des Vampires in 1907. Slide writes, "The publisher [Sheridan House] claimed that although the prison scenes in All Things Human were 'not for the squeamish,' they were 'authenticated by the author's own experiences." Quite uncommon in the trade.
Price: $2,500