For the pleasure of his company : an affair of the misty city, thrice told

Charles Warren Stoddard’s only novel features a protagonist who is an aspiring writer living among the Bohemian artistic circles of nineteenth-century San Francisco—the same circles Stoddard himself inhabited. This Q19 volume includes three of Stoddard’s Hawaiian travel sketches, a critical introduction, and extensive annotations. Charles Warren Stoddard (1843–1909) was, during his life, an acclaimed and prolific writer in multiple genres: poetry, travel sketches, personal memoir, and conversion narrative. His most popular works were dispatches primarily from the South Sea Islands but also extended into Palestine, Egypt, and what would become known as Hawai‘i, most of which were published in the __San Francisco Chronicle__ and then collected into books. __For the Pleasure of His Company: An Affair of the Misty City, Thrice Told__ (1903) is Stoddard’s only novel. This new edition, as with other works in Penn Press’s series Q19: The Queer American Nineteenth Century, returns and reframes an important queer literary text to print. Set mostly in and around San Francisco in the late nineteenth century, the novel features a protagonist, Paul Clitheroe, who is an aspiring writer living among the Bohemian artistic circles of that place and time—the same circles Stoddard himself inhabited. The novel is both formally experimental and largely autobiographical. Thus Paul comes into contact, as Stoddard did, with writers, artists, actors, directors, priests, adventurers, and many others as he attempts to begin his career. Bohemian artistic life and erotic experimentation go hand in hand here: Paul has multiple relationships with other men even as he writes a novel that features similar liaisons. At the very end of the story, while on a cruise in the Pacific, Paul impulsively leaves his ship and disappears in a canoe with some young Hawaiian men. This parallels Stoddard’s life too: he spent many long periods of his life in Hawai‘i, where he found the local homoerotic customs to his liking. This Q19 volume also includes three of Stoddard’s Hawaiian travel sketches, which chronicle his intimate personal relationship with a Hawaiian youth he calls Kána-Aná. The volume contains a full critical introduction as well as extensive annotations explaining textual references of various kinds and identifying parallels with Stoddard’s own life. Contents Introduction For the Pleasure of His Company Introduction Book First Paul Clitheroe I What the Moon Shone On II What the Sun Shone On III Scribes and Pharisees IV Foxlair the Faithless V Owing to Circumstances VI Trials and Tribulations VII Among the Mummers VIII Hard Lines IX From Bad to Worse X Balm of Hurt Wounds Book Second. Miss Juno I Miss Juno II In a Rose Garden III Where the Bee Sucks IV Honey in the Honeycomb V A Mystery Half Unraveled Book Third Little Mama I A Mysterious Stranger II Little Mama III A Recapitulation IV The Erratic Order of Young Knighthood V Our Lady of Pain VI A Contradiction VII A Passion Torn to Tatters VIII In Eclipse IX The Transit of Little Mama X In the Valley of the Shadow XI The Beginning of the End XII By the World Forgot Chumming with a Savage Part I Kána-Aná Part II How I Converted My Cannibal Part III Barbarian Days Notes