Love letters

Published at the end of the 1990s, My Dear Boy is an anthology of gay love letters documenting the heartbreak and joy of love between men for almost 2000 years. The correspondents range from kings and aristocrats, musicians and artists, military men and monks, to farm labourers and herring merchants, political activists and aesthetes, black poets and Japanese actors, drag queens and hustlers.

The letters come from various sources. Some are from books published by their writers, while some were published in newspapers and pamphlets as part of political or religious attacks. Others come from court records (from the Inquisition to the Old Bailey) or were discovered in a cardboard box after a house clearance; many have narrowly escaped censorship and suppression.
http://rictornorton.co.uk/dearboy.htm

The author, Rictor Norton, is an American historian based in the UK, who specialises in literary and cultural history and, more particularly, gay history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rictor_Norton
http://rictornorton.co.uk/index.htm