Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade

Justin Spring

Aug 2010 · Macmillan + ORM

About this ebook

2010 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction

Drawn from the secret, never-before-seen diaries, journals, and sexual records of the novelist, poet, and university professor Samuel M. Steward, Secret Historian is a sensational reconstruction of one of the more extraordinary hidden lives of the twentieth century.

An intimate friend of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Thornton Wilder, Steward maintained a secret sex life from childhood on, and documented these experiences in brilliantly vivid (and often very funny) detail.

After leaving the world of academe to become Phil Sparrow, a tattoo artist on Chicago's notorious South State Street, Steward worked closely with Alfred Kinsey on his landmark sex research. During the early 1960s, Steward changed his name and identity once again, this time to write exceptionally literate, upbeat pro-homosexual pornography under the name of Phil Andros.

Until today he has been known only as Phil Sparrow—but an extraordinary archive of his papers, lost since his death in 1993, has provided Justin Spring with the material for an exceptionally compassionate and brilliantly illuminating life-and-times biography. More than merely the story of one remarkable man, Justin Spring's Secret Historian is a moving portrait of homosexual life long before Stonewall and gay liberation.

Ratings and reviews

My overall impression of Sam Steward's life was one of empathy & identification. Although he possessed much more education & opportunity than I, much of his own accord; his basic feelings toward life & his sexual orientation/activity is what I could most closely associate with. I really came to care very much for Sam Steward; someone I had never known of even heard of until I read this book's review in The New York Times. THANK YOU Justin Spring for pursuing this work into publication; I am most heartily grateful to you.

Fascinating biography of a gay man who kept track of all of his sexual partners throughout his life - including some notorious ones (Rock Hudson, Rudolph Valentino to name a couple). As a professor and then a tatoo artist and sex researcher, Steward had to choose between career and love - something that resonates with me since I was faced with a similar choice in my day. And since I grew up in a relatively conservative household [like Steward], my background did not provide any strategies for dealing with my homosexuality other than to live an [at least partially] closeted existence - something I have [since] rejected. Warning: this book is definitely *not* for the uninitiated (!).

About the author

Justin Spring is a writer specializing in twentieth-century American art and culture, and the author of many monographs, catalogs, museum publications, and books, including Fairfield Porter: A Life in Art and Paul Cadmus: The Male Nude.