Henry B. Fuller

Henry B. Fuller (1857-1929) circa 1893, from Constance Griffin, Henry Blake Fuller: A critical biography, 1939. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Henry Blake Fuller (January 9, 1857 - July 28, 1929) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer.

Life

Youth and education

Fuller was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Mary Josephine (Sanford) (died 1907) and George Wood Fuller (died 1885), a banker and railroad executive. Attending schools in Chicago and Wisconsin, Henry developed a love of the arts and architecture, which soon saw him on numerous travels throughout Europe, beginning in 1879.

Career

Fuller's earliest works were travel romances set in Italy that featured allegorical characters. Both The Chevalier of Pensieri–Vani (1890) and The Châtelaine of La Trinité (1892) bear some thematic resemblance to the works of Henry James, whose primary interest was in the contrast between American and European ways of life. Fuller's earliest 2 books appealed to the genteel tastes of cultivated New Englanders such as Charles Eliot Norton and James Russell Lowell, who took Fuller's work as a promising sign of a burgeoning literary culture in what was then still largely the frontier city of Chicago.

Fuller then turned to literary realism, writing The Cliff-Dwellers (1893), what is perhaps the 1st novel set among the skyscrapers and frenetic business culture of modern-day Chicago. The novel shocked and outraged Chicago readers, who found its unflattering portrait of the city jarring; but won the praise of influential critic and novelist William Dean Howells, whose positive review did much to secure Fuller's position as an important regional realist.

Fuller also wrote twelve one-act plays, collected in The Puppet Booth (1896). He wrote for various journals, including The Dial, and he provided some editorial assistance to Poetry in its early years.

While Fuller is considered one of the important novelists of Chicago's early years, his own relation to the city was often strained. The scion of one of Chicago's early settler families, he found the increasingly industrial and multicultural nature of the city offputting. His ambivalence is expressed in The Cliff-Dwellers and With the Procession, both of which are set in Chicago. The Cliff-Dwellers is one of the first novels to treat at length social life in the new, skyscraper environment that was pioneered in Chicago.

In 1898, Fuller was also a founding member of the Eagle's Nest Art Colony in Illinois. He wrote a column of art criticism for the New York Evening Post.

Private life

Fuller never married. His journals from his teenage days make it clear he was in love with some dormitory roommates at Allison Classical Academy. At the age of 19, he wrote in an imaginary personal advertisement: "I would pass by twenty beautiful women to look upon a handsome man". At 34, he wrote that he was in love with an adolescent boy who had blue eyes and strawberry blonde hair.

Five years later, Fuller wrote and published a short play, At Saint Judas's, about a homosexual who commits suicide at the wedding of his former lover. It is credited with being the first American play dealing explicitly with homosexuality.(Citation needed) In 1924 Fuller embarked upon the last of his many European tours with William Emery Shepherd, a 24-year-old college student. Their letters do not indicate their relationship was anything but a friendship. The trip exhausted Fuller, who continued writing literary reviews for a variety of newspapers and magazines upon his return to Chicago, as well as two novels that were published posthumously.

Fuller died in Chicago on July 28, 1929, "at the home of Wakeman T. Ryan, with whom he had lived for the last three years." His death was ascribed to "heart disease, aggravated by the heat." He is buried in

Writing

Novels like The Cliff-Dwellers and With the Procession (1895) were influenced by the social realism of Howells, who described American institutions being transformed by the economic and demographic changes of the late nineteenth century, although the scenes of violence in The Cliff-Dwellers feature elements of naturalism not to be found in Howells' novels. With the Procession, though realistic, was kindlier in touch, with humor playing over its seriousness, unlike the relentless realism of The Cliff-Dwellers. Fuller's preference for Howells over James is the subject of one of Fuller's important unpublished essays entitled "Howells or James?"

Perhaps his finest achievement is the controversial Bertram Cope's Year (1919), a subtle novel about homosexuality. Fuller self-published the novel in Chicago after unsuccessfully making the rounds of several New York publishing houses. Set on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, it featured an attractive young English instructor who becomes the elusive object of desire for several young women and at least 2 men of different ages. Cope's primary emotional attachment is to his effeminate college chum Arthur Lemoyne, who comes to Evanston to live with Cope until Lemoyne is expelled from the campus for making a backstage pass at another male student while dressed as a woman. The novel ends on an ambiguous note concerning the issue of Cope's sexuality. It received less than enthusiastic reviews from critics who did not understand the book's satirical intentions. It puzzled critics and embarrassed his friends. Upon its republication in 1998, it received enthusiastic reviews.

Recognition

In 2000, Fuller was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame for his contributions to gay literature.

Publications

Plays

• The Puppet-Booth: Twelve plays. New York: Century, 1896.
• The Fan: A comedy in three acts. New York: Samuel French, 1925.

Novels

• The Chevalier of Pensieri–Vani (as "Stanton Page"). Boston: J.G. Cupples, 1890.

New York: Century Co., 1892.

• The Châtelaine of La Trinité. New York: Century, 1892.
• The Cliff-Dwellers: A novel. New York: Harper, 1893; Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2010.
• With the Procession. New York: Harper, 1894; Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1965.
• The Last Refuge: A Sicilian romance. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1900.
• Under the Skylights. New York: Appleton, 1901.
• On the Stairs. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918.
• Bertram Cope's Year: A novel. Chicago: R.F. Seymour, 1919.
• Gardens of This World. New York: Knopf, 1929.
• Not on the Screen. New York & London: Knopf, 1930.

Short fiction

• From the Other Side: Stories of transatlantic travel. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1898.
• The New Flag: Satires. Chicago: privately published, 1899.
• Waldo Trench and Others: Stories of Americans in Italy. New York: Scribner, 1908.

Non-fiction

• Lines Long and Short: Biographical sketches in various rhythms. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

References

• Bowron, Bernard R., Jr. Henry B. Fuller of Chicago: The ordeal of a genteel realist in ungenteel America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974.
• Griffin, Constance M. Henry Blake Fuller: A critical biography. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1939.
• Scambray, Kenneth. A Varied Harvest: The life and works of Henry Blake Fuller. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987.
• Silet, Charles L. P. Henry Blake Fuller and Hamlin Garland: A reference guide. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1977.

External links

Poems

• Fuller in Poetry: A magazine of verse, 1912-1922: "Postponement," "Toward Childhood"

Books

• Works by Henry Blake Fuller at Project Gutenberg

Audio / video

• File:Speaker Icon.svg Henry B. Fuller public domain audiobooks from LibriVox

About

• Henry B. Fuller at The Literature Network
• Henry B. Fuller by Harriet Monroe

Etc.

• Henry Blake Fuller Papers at the Newberry Library