Gay History
of Gays and Lesbians
Gay History
Father of Gay History
Rictor Norton Ph.D. Social and literary historian and writer, born 25 June 1945, Friendship, New York, USA; Education: Florida Southern College, BA 1967; Florida State University, MA, PhD 1972. Doctoral dissertation on homosexual themes in English Renaissance literature, published as The Homosexual Literary Tradition, 1972. Career: Instructor, Florida State University, 1970-72. Member of the Gay Liberation Front, Florida, 1971-72. Edited The Homosexual Imagination, a special issue of College English, the first all-gay issue of an academic journal, 1974. Emigrated from Florida to London in 1973. Research Editor, Gay News, London, 1974-78. Foreign Rights Manager, Western Publishing Company (Golden Books), 1979-90. Freelance publishing consultant 1991-94; freelance writer and editor since 1995. Wrote articles for Gay Sunshine, The Advocate, and Gay News, etc. during the 1970s. Author of books on gay history and on the Gothic Novel (2000), biography of Ann Radcliffe (1999), edited academic collections of erotica (2002, 2004), contributor of entries to Who's Who in Gay & Lesbian History (Routledge, 2001) and contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.