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

A 2010 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction, this biography draws on the previously unpublished diaries, journals, and sexual records of Samuel M. Steward—a novelist, poet, and university professor who lived a hidden life throughout the twentieth century. Steward was an intimate friend of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Thornton Wilder, and documented his secret sex life from childhood onward in detailed accounts. After leaving academia, Steward became Phil Sparrow, a tattoo artist on Chicago's South State Street, and collaborated with Alfred Kinsey on his sex research. In the early 1960s, he adopted a new identity to write homosexual literature under the pseudonym Phil Andros. Following his death in 1993, an archive of his papers was discovered, enabling Justin Spring to construct this biography. The work examines Steward's life and also serves as a portrait of homosexual experience before Stonewall and the gay liberation movement.