Introduction

Abstract

The little-known figure of Philip Gillespie Bainbrigge is introduced to the reader, and his clandestine writings and importance for the history of sexuality and Classical Reception are outlined. A brief biography sketches Bainbrigge’s education at Eton and Cambridge, his many homosexual friends, and his career as a schoolmaster at Shrewsbury. The Introduction examines his participation in a secretive culture in which men shared private homoerotic writings with each other. It examines Bainbrigge’s wartime friendship with Wilfred Owen, and his own war poetry, in the context of scholarship on homoeroticism and First World War poetry. It lays out the way in which classical education and the history of sexuality are intimately linked, exploring the institutionalization of the Classics in public schools, attempts to censor ancient sexuality, and sex education.