[Ads-l] Antedating of "Homosexuality"

[Shapiro, Fred]

homosexuality (OED 1892 [presumably November or December])

1892 J. A. Symonds _Letter to Havelock Ellis_ 21 Oct. in Sean Brady _John Addington Symonds and Homosexuality: A Critical Edition of Sources_ 228

The fact that the majority are uninfluenced by these suggestions, while the minority feel the stirrings of sexual instinct under their impact, seems to prove that in the case of the latter there is an inborn bias toward homosexuality.

NOTE: This is a trivial antedating in terms of time, but significant in terms of Symonds's priority. I base my priority argument on the fact that OED's first citation is to Chaddock's translation of Krafft-Ebing's _Psychopathia Sexualis_. Chaddock's preface to that translation is dated November 1892.

Fred Shapiro

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