Rebecca N. Mitchell discusses the anti-cosmopolitanism of litigious editor and literary gadfly T. W. H. Crosland.
Poet, editor, and constant litigant T. W. H. Crosland (1868-1924) grounded claims of moral superiority and sexual propriety in vitriolic nationalism, xenophobia, and homophobia. Yet, as this paper argues, Crosland’s court testimony, published invective, and personal behavior distilled the aesthetic and moral narrowmindedness of anti-cosmopolitanism, ultimately promoting the very values that Crosland ostensibly loathed.