Following His Flag

One of the most prolific Uranian poets and a member of the Order of Chaeronea, E.E. Bradford regularly published short fiction in boys’ magazines between 1890 and 1910. Bradford most clearly depicts the chivalric same-sex romances between boys that Uranians described as a solution to the boy problem. He sets his stories abroad in locations such as Russia, England’s imperial rival, and in colonial North Africa, and like the popular stories of The Boy’s Own Paper , where Bradford regularly published his work, his tales depict heroic acts of bravery and pluck by pairs of boys involved in intimate same-sex friendships. While the history of juvenile reading in the late nineteenth century suggests that stories about imperialism sold boys on a shared national mission and redirected potentially revolutionary aggression in the service of empire, Bradford appropriates the trappings of imperialist adventure stories to instead promote romantic friendship as the basis for a sense of social cohesion, the development of moral character, and an ethos of love and service .