Queer Places:
Greenwood Plantation, Thomasville, GA 31792, Stati Uniti
The Book Basement, 9 College Way, Charleston, SC 29401, Stati Uniti
Laurel Hill Cemetery, Thomasville, Georgia 31792, Stati Uniti
Edwin
D. Peacock (January 2, 1910 – August 23, 1989) was the owner of the Book
Basement in Charleston with his longtime partner
John Zeigler. He was
also friends with Carson McCullers who used him as inspiration for a character
in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
Edwin D. Peacock was born in 1910 in Thomasville, Georgia, the son of a druggist. His mother was born on her family's ante-bellum Greenwood Plantation.[1]
After graduating from high school and working for a couple of years for his father, Peackock moved to Columbus, Georgia and worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps.[2] In Columbus he met Carson McCullers, and it was Peackock who encouraged her to write and introduced her future husband James Reeves McCullers Jr.. Peacock is fictionalized as the homosexual deaf-mute, John Singer, in her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.[3]
Edwin Peacock was the longtime partner of John Zeigler, Jr. In 1946 they opened a bookshop "The Book Basement", in Charleston, on the ground floor of 9 College Way.[4] The Book Basement became a leading independent bookstore, the meeting place for various civil rights groups. Gay men passing through Charleston, knew to visit the bookshop, including Maurice Sendak and Langston Hughes, who became friends of the owners. A drawing of the building by Prentiss Taylor was used on advertising events for the store for many years. They closed the bookstore in 1971.[5] Today a plaque in front of the building remembers Peacock and Zeigler.[1]
Zeigler published a cycle of memorial poems on their relationship, The Edwin Poems.[6]
Peacock died in 1989 and is buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery, Thomasville, alongside his parents.
In 2009 James T. Sears wrote Edwin and John: A Personal History of the American South, published by Routledge.[1]
My published books:
