ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between late nineteenth-century life writing published in serials such as newspapers, journals and the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) and discourses of homosexuality between 1890 and 1900. It focuses on the obituaries and biographies of three gay writers, J.A. Symonds, Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde, who died in April 1893, July 1894 and November 1900, respectively. The chapter discusses the range of expressive strategies open to journalists/writers who wished to acknowledge and on occasion to celebrate the significance of these icons of gay life and writing in the mainstream and class press. It looks at a sample of obituaries from mainstream middle-class serials such as the daily Times, the weekly Athenaeum, and the monthly Contemporary Review. Kains-Jackson's bold coverage of Symonds's death is notably free of the embarrassment of the rest of the mainstream press about Symonds's 'excesses'.
