author
Gregory Casparian
1856–1942
Little is known about this Turkish-Armenian-American writer and artist, which only adds to the intrigue of his singular place in literary history. His 1906 novel An Anglo-American Alliance has drawn lasting attention for imagining gender and same-sex love in ways that felt startlingly ahead of its time.
1 Audiobook
An Anglo-American Alliance: A Serio-Comic Romance and Forecast of the Future
by Gregory Casparian
About the author
Born on October 15, 1856, Gregory Casparian was a Turkish-Armenian who later emigrated to the United States in 1877 and settled in New York. Sources describe him as an artist, painter, and photoengraver as well as a writer, and he appears to have published just one known book.
That book, An Anglo-American Alliance: A Serio-Comic Romance and Forecast of the Future (1906), is the work for which he is remembered today. Though obscure for many years, it has since been noted by reference sources and libraries as an unusual early speculative novel, especially for its treatment of romance, gender transformation, and social ideas that now make it of interest to readers of LGBTQ+ and science-fiction history.
Casparian died in New York on July 15, 1942. Because so little biographical information is firmly documented, his story survives mainly through the remarkable afterlife of that one novel.