Two College Friends

Written in 1871 by a woman passing as a man, Two College Friends is a quiet revolutionary work: one of the first American novels to give voice to same-sex desire, disguised as collegiate romance before such things could be spoken plainly. The story follows Ned, sharp-tongued and watchful, and Tom, painfully shy and unfairly handsome, who meet in a Harvard professor's study in 1861. What begins as academic acquaintance deepens into something the era could only hint at: a devotion that exceeds the boundaries of friendship, complicated by the professor's own lost love, Tom's mother. When the Civil War erupts, the two young men are hurled toward a violence they cannot comprehend, and the question of what they mean to each other becomes impossible to avoid. The novel is tender, sometimes agonizing, and historically staggering in its emotional honesty.