Books with title Bertram Cope's Year: A Novel

"Bertram Cope's Year" by Henry Blake Fuller. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

"An entertaining satirical novel (set in a thinly camouflaged Evanston, Ill), that was written and published nearly 80 years ago by a once well-regarded but now nearly forgotten Chicago novelist and poet, Henry Blake Fuller. Modern readers may be reminded of several novels and films its main themes foreshadow: 'The Object of My Affection,' 'Stephen McCauley's account of a young woman who falls in love with a gay teacher. 'Something for Everyone,' in which Michael York plays an amoral hustler who erotically manipulates an entire household, Pasolini's brilliant 'Teoreme,' featuring Terence Stamp as a seductive stranger who beds every member of a bourgeois household....Audacious for its time, 'Bertram Cope's Year' was either ignored or misunderstood when it was first published, with few copies sold. Discouraged, Fuller burned both the original manuscript and the remaining unbound proofs. 'There seems to be no way,' he wrote his friend Hamlin Garland, 'for one to get read or paid, so - Shutters up.' It is a pleasure to have those shutters taken back down to reveal an engaging and quite undeservedly neglected comedy of bad manners.' -The New York Times "Mr. H. B. Fuller's realism is the real thing; in seeming to register it interprets and portrays. Therefore your initial reservations as to Bertram Cope's importance or salience as a subject may well have been forgotten if not consciously withdrawn when the full portrait is before you. he is a nice clean boy of the midlands who not long after his respectable graduation returns to his old university for what turns out to be a single year's service as instructor....He is tolerably successful with his work and happy in it, but we have chiefly concerned with his extra-professional experiences." -The Weekly Review "A welcome addition to the series of studies of American life and character which have come all too intermittently and charily from the hand of Henry B. Fuller....The kind of novel which must be enjoyed not for its matter so much as for its quality, its richness of texture and subtlety of atmosphere. It has distinction, is as finely wrought in its way as a Howells novel or a Cable." -The Bookman "Marked by sly satire of people and things....Mr. Fuller is a prolific writer who clothes his thoughts in pleasing language." -The Baptist

Henry’s novel was possibly the ever dauntless and favorable LGBT literature of the first 20 years of the 20th century in the United States. In this tale, Bertram Cope is a youthful college professor, around the age of 24, but not a day more than 25, who is chased by men and women, both young and old. In creating this novel, Henry had to wisely art his subject matters in order to affront the susceptibilities of issuers. As an effect, a reader of today, is left rather, but not totally, puzzled of the exact emotions that characters have for each other by the last chapter of the story. However, no printing press would tap it, which finally needed that Henry took the self-printing course. Henry Blake Fuller was an American author and short fiction writer from Chicago, Illinois. Henry’s first books were travel love stories taking place in Italy that showcased figurative heroes. Both The Chevalier of Pensieri–Vani and The Châtelaine of La Trinité had a few subject similarity to the masterpieces of Henry James, whose early attention was in the contrary among American and European lifestyles. Henry’s first two novels charmed to the refined styles of civilized New Englanders like Charles Eliot Norton and James Russell Lowell, who brought Henry’s works of art as a hopeful emblem of a middle class literary tradition in what was then still widely the border city of Chicago. Henry then changed to literary pragmatism, drafting The Cliff-Dwellers, what is probably the first work situated between the skyscrapers and frantic trade tradition of Chicago of today. The story surprised and annoyed Chicago readers, who searched for its unbecoming picture of the city shuddering. The story won the acclaim of the inspirational critic and writer William Dean Howells, whose constructive criticism did much to uphold Henry’s standing as a worthy regional humanist.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

In the social scene known as 'cap and town' in fictional Churchton, Illinois (read 'Evanston and Northwestern University') comes young instructor Bertram Cope. Blond, blue-eyed, charming and book-learned, with a patina of conversational sophistication; he is, however, not quite genuine. Impressed by wealth and well-appointed houses, Cope is too careful and self-conscious - and what he doesn't realize is that he is observed and judged as often as he observes and judges.