Desire

Jonathan Dollimore is a literary theorist, specializing in the fields of Renaissance literature (especially drama), art, censorship and the history of ideas, and a trailblazer in the study of gender and queer theory. At the University of Sussex he pioneered cultural materialism in early modern and literary studies and gay studies in education, including co-founding there the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence. His landmark books include Radical Tragedy (1984), with Alan Sinfield, Political Shakespeare (1985) and Sexual Dissidence (1991). In later books like Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture (1999) and Sex Literature and Censorship (2001) he turned his attention to a fresh interrogation of those dark, recalcitrant elements of desire and mortality that resist utopian transformation. He has held chairs at the University of Sussex and University of York and lectured and taught throughout the world.

Jonathan Dollimore, a working class man who became one of our most thoughtful intellectuals, has written a memoir that meditates on sex, identity, boredom and ecstasy. It is a rich, sad, wise book.Edmund White

• Preface1. Life-Changing Accident2. Loss and Change3. Life-Changing Wager4. New York: City of Many Sirens5. 'Death Is In My Sight Today" - 1990-16. On Loss7. Sydney, 19888. Reckonings9. Oblivion and Touch (1991)Index