Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania (1870) is a novel by Bayard Taylor. Written toward the end of Taylor's career as a prominent travel writer and poet, Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania has been recognized by scholars as the first gay novel in American literary history. "When they were seated side by side, and Joseph leaned his head back on the supporting arm, while the train moved away with them, he felt that a new power, a new support, had come to his life. The face upon which he looked was no longer strange; the hand which had rested on his heart was warm with kindred blood. Involuntarily he extended his own; it was taken and held, and the dark gray, courageous eyes turned to him with a silent assurance which he felt needed no words." During a train derailment, Joseph Aster sustains minor injuries and his helped by a kind stranger named Philip Held. Regaining his senses, Joseph feels an unspeakably strong spiritual and physical connection with his savior. As they become inseparable friends, Joseph's home life begins to suffer as his wife Julia asserts control over their finances, often to the benefit of her wealthy family. When tragedy strikes, Joseph has no one to turn to but Philip, a man he has grown to love more than anything in the world. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Bayard Taylor's Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania is a classic work of queer literature reimagined for modern readers.

Bayard Taylor (1825-1878) was an American poet, literary critic, and travel writer. Born in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, he was raised in a wealthy family of Quaker farmers. At 17, he began working as a printer's apprentice and soon turned to poetry under the recommendation of Rufus Wilmot Griswold. Finding success with his first volume, Ximena, or the Battle of the Sierra Morena, and other Poems (1844), Taylor became a prominent travel writer, visiting Europe and sending accounts of his experience to such publications as the Tribune and The Saturday Evening Post. Throughout his career, he traveled to Egypt, Palestine, China, and Japan, interviewing such figures as commodore Matthew Perry and German scientist Alexander von Humboldt. Beginning in 1862, Taylor served for one year as a U.S. diplomat in St. Petersburg, publishing his first novel in 1863. Over the next several years, he traveled across the American west with his wife Maria, publishing Colorado: A Summer Trip (1867), a collection of travel essays. His late work Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania (1870), originally serialized in The Atlantic, was reviewed poorly upon publication, but has since been recognized as America's first gay novel.