Sagitta's Books of the Nameless Love

This is the first complete translation of the volume of six “books” that John Henry Mackay published pseudonymously as Die Bücher der namenlosen Liebe von Sagitta in 1913. The project was begun in 1905 and soon had its own problems, as described by Mackay in his introduction, “The History of a Fight for the Nameless Love.” This—and the collection all together—is an important historical document of the beginning of the homosexual emancipation movement in Germany a century ago and of the role that boy-lovers played in it. At the same time it gives an insight into the heart and mind of an accomplished writer who knew personally the joys and pains of “the nameless love”—which Oscar Wilde called “the Love that dare not speak its name.”