Conclusion

Uranian juvenile romances share features with speculative modes such as fantasy and sci-fi and their investments in world-building, and Uranian writers for boys consistently demonstrated an interest in utopianism while looking backwards for past models and forwards to a future when same-sex love would be free from persecution. However, this utopian vision failed to materialize in more concrete political action involving boys and youth. The intensified policing of gay men in the 1930s and the use of accusations of pedophilia to erode broader support for social reforms led to the movement’s distancing itself from the rhetoric of intergenerational chivalric love and boyhood romance as a response to the boy problem. This effectively caused the abandonment of Uranian youth as the movement shifted to focusing on egalitarian relations between adults. Under these circumstances, Uranian children’s literature entered a period of suppression and mostly disappeared until decades later .