The Violet Hour

The members of the literary circle known as the Violet Quill—Christopher Cox, Robert Ferro, Michael Grumley, Andrew Holleran, Felice Picano, Edmund White, and George Whitmore—collectively represent the aspirations and the achievement of gay writing during and after the gay liberation movement. This social history shows how the works of these authors both reflected and criticized the values, principles, and prejudices of the culture of gay liberation. In spinning many of the most important stories gay men told of themselves in the short period between the 1969 Stonewall Riots and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic during the 1980s, the Violet Quill exerted an enormous influence on gay culture.

The members of the literary circle known as the Violet Quill—Andrew Holleran, Felice Picano, Edmund White, Christopher Cox, Michael Grumley, Robert Ferro, and George Whitmore—collectively represent the aspirations and the achievement of gay writing during and after the gay liberation movement. David Bergman's social history shows how the works of these authors reflected, advanced, and criticized the values, principles, and prejudices of the culture of gay liberation. In spinning many of the most important stories gay men told of themselves in the short period between the 1969 Stonewall Riots and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic during the 1980s, the Violet Quill exerted an enormous influence on gay culture. The death toll of the AIDS epidemic, including four of the Violet Quill's seven members, has made putting such recent events into a historical context all the more important and difficult. The work of the Violet Quill expresses the joy, suffering, grief, hope, activism, and caregiving of their generation. The Violet Hour meets the urgent need for a history of the men who bore witness not only to the birth but also to the decimation of a culture.

David Bergman is professor of English at Towson University. The editor of The Violet Quill Reader, he has won awards for his collection of poems, Cracking the Code, his book Gaiety Transfigured: Self-Representation in Gay American Literature, and for editing the anthology Men on Men 2000.

The Violet Hour is a valuable resource and an entertaining read.

Sean O'Toole:
A perceptive and heartfelt study.

Arthur L. Little, Jr.:
[Bergman] is extremely well-versed...and his study should prove a rich source.

Gary L. Atkins, Seattle University:
It is a notable and worthy contribution to gay history and literary analysis.

Martha E. Stone:
a readable page-turner...a fascinating group biography

Gene Hayworth:
Bergman's book is an interesting mix of literary scholarship and personal memoir.

The Violet Hour by David Bergman explores the aspirations and achievements of the gay writers known collectively as the Violet Quill.

Mark Panos:
Only a scholarly expert in gay literature and cultural history could produce a book as comprehensive, compelling and informative asThe Violet Hour. Yet Bergman avoids pedantry entirely, making his work as much of a treat to read as any of the best writings of men he is writing about.