About the Author

Simon Goldhill is professor of Greek and the director of the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Cambridge. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the author of many books, including Freud's Couch, Scott's Buttocks, Bront 's Grave; How to Stage Greek Tragedy Today; and Love, Sex & Tragedy: How the Ancient World Shapes Our Lives, all also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews

"It is not often that page turner accurately describes academic histories of Victorian grandees. But, unlike most monographs, Simon Goldhill's A Very Queer Family Indeed begins with a kiss between Minnie Sidgwick and Edward White Benson after Benson had proposed marriage. The subsequent marriage laid the foundation of what Goldhill calls 'a very queer family indeed.' Despite achieving high positions in late-Victorian and Edwardian institutional life, the Bensons remained in, but not of, conventional life. This liminal position enables Goldhill to trace developments in writing, understandings of sexuality, and religion between 1840 and 1940."
-- "Anglican and Episcopal History"

"This bold, erudite, and highly original book takes as its principal subject the vast literary output of an extraordinary Victorian family--that of Archbishop Edward W. Benson and his wife and children, almost all of whom published extensively. Goldhill makes a series of brilliant forays into Victorian discussions of sex and sexuality, of religious belief and doubt, and of topics as engaging and complexly shaded as 'discretion' and 'indiscretion.' A Very Queer Family Indeed is, all told, a remarkable achievement--one that is both beautifully written and compulsively readable."--Christopher Lane, author of The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty