Customer Reviews
Not bad but not brilliant - By: Helena, 15 Oct 2008 
This book is a bit hit & miss. For a start, the title is a bit of a misnomer as the book covers the period from about 1700 to well into the 20th century. In fact, parts of the book seemed to begin at about 1895, drift into the 20th century & not bother to go backin time at all.
Also, because the author skimmed over so much, I wondered if there just wasn't the information available about the 19th century to putin a book, so he had to divert his attentions to cover a wider time period. I don't actually believe this to be the case, which made what little he did mention become frustrating because he never goes into the subject matterin any depth. It's all a quick skim across the surface.
This book serves as a basic introduction to homosexualityin history, but I think readers will have to make much use of the bibliography to really learn about the subject.
On gay life 150 years ago - By: Bert Krus, 02 Sep 2006 
When Mister Graham Robb started his book on homosexual lovein the 19th century he was suddenly faced with prejudices he never expected to learn from his friends & colleagues. People even felt pity with his family members. Dad goes gay! But not really. The way Robb handles this irritation is an eye opener & a foretaste of his analyzation on homosexuality for the rest of the book. In other words, Robb is great with chasing away dark clouds to let the sun shinein on this subject. He demonstrates it is the people's personal view on homosexuality which has hardly changed over the last ages. Only the position of homosexualsin public (debate) has improved.
A while ago I told a good friend of mine (he is a language scientist) that I would like to have a jobin a gay bookstore. He replied: so you want to become a full time homosexual?! I couldn't believe my ears...
'Strangers' has teached me a lot. In fact, gay life looked actually quite the same 150 years ago. Networks & novels gave direction to many, however,in a coded language, not to discover by everybody. Hostility against gays was certainly not common. In fact, the great oppression of gays is a 20th century phenomenon which runs parallel with visible female - & gay liberation. The word "homosexual" didn't existin the first part of the 19th century but this does not mean people didn't know the gay identity, they just referred to it differently with words like "sodomite" or "invert".
Highly enjoyable on "Strangers" is that Graham Robb is literary well matched to writers like Oscar Wilde or Hans Christian Anderson. It makes both notes & reflections big fun.
excellent and very funny - By: M. Notman, 17 Mar 2004 Id expected a rather dry tome but this is brilliantly written &in places very funny. Well worth the money, although the authors picture has a bit of a scary eyebrow thing going on.
Falls off a bitin the last chapter, but the rest is excellent - although he doesn't exactly stick to his topic (19th century seems to include 1700 up to about the 2nd world war!). This is nitpicking though,in general i loved it.
