The first novel in English to explicitly explore the subject of male homosexuality. Written by a British emigre to America, the New York theatre critic Alfred J. Cohen, under the pseudonym of ""Alan Dale"", this first-person narrative is told by a young Englishwoman, Elsie Bouverie, who gradually discovers that her new husband, Arthur Ravener, is romantically involved with another man.

A novel, first published in 1826, set in the 21st century, when England is a republic governed by a ruling elite. The narrator, an outsider introduced to the circle, tells a story of tragic, complicated love, and of the gradual extermination of the human race by plague.