George Norman Douglas
(1868 - 1952) U.K.
Diplomat and travel writer
Douglas was born at Türingen in the Vorarlberg in Austria, of mixed Scottish and German aristocratic lineage, and educated in England and at the Gymnasium in Karlsruhe. After a brief stint in the British diplomatic service, he bought a villa at Gayola on the Bay of Naples and later moved to Capri.
In 1898 he married a cousin, Elsa Fitzgibbon, by whom he had two sons before he divorced her on the grounds of her infidelity in 1903. However, in 1897 he had become erotically involved with Michele, the 15-year-old brother of a temporary mistress, and after his divorce, his principal erotic and emotional interests were pederastic. From Capri period onwards, there are records of a succession of boyfriends, named and nameless, some short-term, others who remained friends for life.
Douglas became financially impoverished after 1907 and lived in poverty for about two decades with his later companion Giuseppe Orioli in Paris, St Malo, Menton, Florence, Lisbon, and London, before returning to Capri in 1946. In 1916 he chose flight from England to Italy, skipping bail after he was charged with sexual assault of a 16-year-old boy.
Douglas is chiefly remembered for his travel books about Tunisia, Calabria and Capri, published as Fountains in the Sand (1912), Siren Land (1911) and Old Calabria (1915) dealing with Italy; his novel South Wind (1917) which celebrates the pleasures of the hedonistic life on his adopted island of Capri.
Excerpts from: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History, from Antiquity to WWII, Routledge, London, 2001 - and other sources
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