“I'm Not What I Thought I Was”

Visionary thinker, adult novelist, Anglo-Catholic apologist, and amateur sexologist, Archibald Kenneth Ingram co-founded the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology and contributed to the final collective publication of the Uranian movement. In addition to composing polemics on sex reform advocating for the equality of homosexuals, Ingram published two boys’ novels: The Greater Triumph: A Story of Osborne and Dartmouth (1911) and Basil Verely: A Study of Charterhouse Life (1912). The former begins as a conventional school story but becomes something like an alternate history in which two boys, coded as homosexual and bisexual respectively, manage to avert World War I. The latter combines elements of the school story with a mystery and ends happily with its protagonist reunited for life with his romantic friend. In his sexological writings, Ingram argues for the notion of homosexual youth as the prototype for a new kind of sexually liberated person, and his boys’ novels depict the integration of his devout Anglo-Catholic beliefs and his theory of homosexual futurism as a means for achieving his utopian vision through pairs of romantic friends .