Queer Places:
Harvard University (Ivy League), 2 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138
22 May Street, Worcester,
MA
William
Wigglesworth Chamberlin (July 25, 1850 - February 6, 1910) is the author of An Extravaganza on the Ancient Ballad of Lord Bateman. A novel by
Frederick Wadsworth Loring,
titled Two College Friends, published in 1871, is set at Harvard University
and, later, during the Civil War. Loring dedicated his story to his Harvard
friend and classmate, William Wigglesworth Chamberlin, suggesting that the
chums of the novel paralleled these chums in life: Indignation at my
dedicating this book to you will be useless, since I am at present three
thousand miles out of your reach. Moreover, this dedication is not intended
as a public monument to our friendship;—I know too much for that. If that
were the case we should manage to quarrel even at this distance … . But I
can dedicate it to you alone of all my college friends, because you and I
were brought so especially into the atmosphere of [the professor] who
inspired me to undertake it.
William Wigglesworth Chamberlin was born in Worcester, on July 25, 1850,
to Henry Harmon Chamberlin (born 1813) and Charlotte Ramsay Clarke. In 1872,
he married Elizabeth Paine (born 1840) , daughter of Charles Paine of
Chalmers. They had one son, Henry Harmon Chamberlin. He was a member of the
Pacific and Nantucket Yacth Club, Boston Authors' Club, American Club
London, Authors' Club London. Chamberlin had a successful career as a
journalist and playwright as well as spending a substantial amount of time
in Europe.
He is noted as having “lived abroad a considerable portion of [his
life]”—always suggestive in the coded discourse of the day—and seems also to
have quickly abandoned the family business for journalism and—even more
suggestive—the theater. In fact, at one point he formed a very successful
partnership with a leading figure of Boston’s bohemian gay circles of the
1880s and 1890s, the playwright
Thomas Russell Sullivan,
with whom Chamberlain wrote a comedy that in 1880 enjoyed wide popularity in
Boston. Entitled A Midsummer Madness, it sounds a very different type of
tale from Two College Friends, more the game of reveal-and-conceal that gays
were forced to play then.
He died on February 6, 1910.
My published books:
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- Love Stories, Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality, by Jonathan Ned
Katz
- The Hub of the Gay Universe, An LGBTQ History of Boston,
Provincetown, and Beyond, by Russ Lopez, 2019
- Shand-Tucci, Douglass. The Crimson Letter . St. Martin's Publishing
Group. Edizione del Kindle.