Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Gambril Nicholson

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. It's not unanimou, but there is consensus that the sourcing is not good enough for an article. The text can be userfied and/or restored if more sources appear. I'd like to commend everybody for the scholarly and constructive discussion. Sandstein 22:08, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

John Gambril Nicholson

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A schoolteacher who wrote some "love" poetry about the boys he taught. The references do not establish notability; all but one either do not mention this person or only do so in passing. The nature of the Love in earnest source is unclear and it could not be followed up on, but it seems it may just be a brief mention. A search for new sources did not turn up "significant coverage in multiple...secondary sources that are reliable" as WP:NBIO requires. -Crossroads- (talk) 06:36, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. -Crossroads- (talk) 06:36, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. -Crossroads- (talk) 06:36, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. -Crossroads- (talk) 06:36, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Poetry-related deletion discussions. -Crossroads- (talk) 06:36, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sexuality and gender-related deletion discussions. -Crossroads- (talk) 06:36, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: Timothy D'Arch Smith's work on Nicholson appears to be fringe scholarship. D'Arch Smith was a contributor[1] to the International Journal of Greek Love(AfD), published by the paederasty advocate and convicted sex offender Walter H. Breen. According to this article by D.H. Mader (himself a NAMBLA supporter, "boy-love" advocate, and photographer of nude children), Breen first advanced the notion of a "Victorian Paidophilic Poetaster Clique" in 1964 and D'Arch Smith built on the idea in his 1970 work Love in Earnest, coining the term "Uranian poetry" (here using "uranian" not in the Ulrichs sense, but as a stand-in for "paederastic"). Google snippet searches of Love in Earnest yield lines which, devoid of context, appear to be fringe advocacy, like:
- (on child pornography): "Photographs of the orgies held on the ship, a little dulled by time and persistent copying, still circulate in some coteries."
- "If there is a tragedy in Uranian affections, it is not the crime of a man's preventing a boy's development of his natural instincts towards the opposite sex, but the hopelessly onesided adoration of the man for the boy whose young and immature mind cannot intellectually or emotionally ..."
- "It must be confessed, too, that there is a certain freshness in the Uranians' insistence on the superiority of adolescent male beauty ..."
  Another of D'Arch Smith's works on the "Uranians" was published in the notorious pro-pedophilia anthology "The Betrayal of Youth: Radical Perspectives on Childhood Sexuality, Intergenerational Sex, and the Social Oppression of Children and Young People". There, he says:

Extended content

Shot through with simple yearnings – analogy with the negro blues not too far-fetched, both reflecting the discontents of an outcast people – it was permeated with longings for the poets’ lost boyhood; with regrets for the briefness of boyhood’s span; with declarations of the supremacy of Uranian love over other manifestations of affection; its, as it were, rightness.
As might be expected, dissatisfactions outweighed euphoria. Celebrations of untroubled and untrammelled love affairs were few and far between. With admirable stoicism, however, the Uranians were able to console themselves with very little: a boy seen in the street, the sound of a treble voice, glimpses of bare flesh at a bathing place, and on occasions, a kiss. Hard won, of rare occurrence, these to the Uranians were riches indeed.
...The uniqueness of the Uranians’ ideal lay in their single-minded tenet that society should discard the socially acceptable prerogative of parenthood and allow them to take from a boy such love as he has had, in the past, to reserve for his father and mother at a time in his life when he most needs a trusted adult guide outside the confines of home and school.
...the Uranians maintained that the very nature of male-to-male experience of sex, with its unwritten code of impermanence, was not callous or immoral but altogether harmless. It was their bravery in throwing down this challenge which demands our attention.

I've searched for other coverage of Nicholson and found mainly other pedophilia advocacy sources, plus one 1978 article by David Hall in The Book Collector which might possibly represent mainstream scholarship.paywall snippet view. Cheers, gnu 57 08:13, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like he's probably notable. Snippet view on Google Books shows a chapter is devoted to Nicholson in The Joy of Bad Verse (1988). Also two pages in Gay Novels of Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth, 1881-1981: A Reader's Guide and I can view those pages in full on Google Books. These are not mere mentions in passing. Plenty of other hits on ProQuest, Google Books and Google Scholar including discourse on Nicholson's possible influence on Oscar Wilde. Also note the incoming link from The Importance of Being Earnest and several other articles. Haukur (talk) 08:43, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Joy of Bad Verse appears to be a book making fun of bad poetry. [2] I can't view it, but I don't know if it constitutes significant coverage. As for the Gay Novels... source, it's really two half-pages, and only one paragraph is about Nicholson (the rest is about one of his works). Also, it's published by McFarland, who don't seem too selective in what they publish, considering they have books on things like parapsychology. [3] You mention other hits, but I looked twice for sources significantly covering this person and did not find any. -Crossroads- (talk) 02:53, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's about bad verse but being noted for bad verse is still being noted and this does appear to go into a lot of detail and analysis. If you search for 'Nicholson' on the page you linked to you'll see what I mean. Should we see if anyone at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request can get us the relevant pages? As for the other source, you're right that a lot of it is on a book by Nicholson but that still counts for our purposes since authors WP:INHERIT notability from their works. Haukur (talk) 11:48, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to check there, go ahead. WP:INHERIT seems to say the opposite - that notability is not inherited. All I'm seeing so far are sources that are either unreliable or are insignificant coverage. Even if we grant the "bad poetry" source, which is not certain, we need multiple such quality sources. -Crossroads- (talk) 21:17, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I cited WP:INHERIT somewhat cheekily but note the "do allow for inherited notability in certain circumstances" sentence which applies to authors. Anyway, I'll see if anyone can help is with that bad poetry resource. I still think the Gay Novels source is a non-trivial WP:RS as well. Haukur (talk) 21:25, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Along with the sources that Haukurth points to, there's also some discussion of Nicholson in the introduction to Brian Reade, Sexual Heretics: Male Homosexuality in English Literature from 1850–1900, and several of his poems are anthologised in that work, and several mentions of him in Brian Taylor, "Motives for Guilt-Free Pederasty: Some Literary Considerations" in The Sociological Review. I'm leaning keep. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 10:50, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Also, for all he may have been associated with Breen (which is, ugh, not a good look) I am not convinced that D'Arch Smith is really fringe. Love in Earnest is cited by respectable scholars such as Rictor Norton (in Myth of the Modern Homosexual) Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 11:02, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Brian Taylor was allegedly a research director for the Paedophile Information Exchange under a pseudonym. "Motives for Guilt-Free Pederasty" also cites Breen (as "Eglinton"), Ken Plummer, and Mader, and includes lines like "Quite apart from the emotive, and often erroneous use of the terms 'victim' and 'assault' [FOOTNOTE: West notes how 'many of the children who fall victim to sexual offences have laid themselves open to advances by their coy provocative behaviour'...]..." Cheers, gnu 57 14:00, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- The Sexual Heretics source doesn't include any information about Nicholson, just a few of his poems and a name drop. The Brian Taylor source is junk as gnu57 explained. I think the evidence that the D'Arch Smith source is mostly fringe advocacy is strong, and managing to get cited by Norton doesn't disprove that. For a similar example of someone getting mainstream citations to support some things, but otherwise engaging in fringe advocacy, see Rind et al. controversy. -Crossroads- (talk) 03:08, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  - Sexual Heretics has three paragraphs of discussion of Nicholson in the introduction, which is non-trivial. This includes mention of a review of his 1892 book in The Hobby Horse, which would itself count towards notability. Haukur (talk) 22:12, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Crossroads1. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:38, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we can write off Love in Earnest as a source counting towards notability. It was published by a mainstream academic publisher and has more than a hundred citations listed on Google Scholar. Gay Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia calls it an "important study" (p. 908). Of course, we don't have to accept it as a source for whatever non-mainstream views appear in it. Haukur (talk) 21:51, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Long review of Nicholson's book by Charles Edward Sayle: Sayle, C. (October 1892). "A New Poet". The Hobby Horse: 128–138. [4] Haukur (talk) 23:36, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete there are not enough significant sources, the article uses primary sources far too much. It clearly violates what encyclopedia articles should be.John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:43, 15 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Seems like there are a couple of sources that require more discussion.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:51, 15 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Let's look at some more sources. Here's Fone, Byrne R. S. 1995. A Road to Stonewall, p. 116: "The silence imposed by homophobia and the need to declare the nature of desire intersect in Nicholson's poem "I Love Him Wisely" (1892) and produce a small but telling masterpiece: I love him wisely if I love him well [14 lines are quoted] "The prudent distance that the speaker keeps between himself and the man he loves is a gulf across which the strong current of sexual desire arcs like an electric charge." Nicholson is also mentioned on pages 94, 95 and 170. On page 287 there's a bibliographic essay which approvingly mentions Love in Earnest: "For the study of nineteenth-century English homoerotic texts, the following should be consulted by any student: Timothy d'Arch Smith's Love in Earnest..." This sort of WP:USEBYOTHERS shows that Love in Earnest cannot be ruled out as a source. Haukur (talk) 10:10, 15 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, I think we should keep since there is plenty of coverage. For WP:THREE I'd nominate a) Love in Earnest (1970) by d'Arch Smith which is a book-length study that features Nicholson prominently and has him on the cover.[5] Whatever can be said about d'Arch Smith and however distasteful some of his views may have been, his book is routinely cited, and even praised, by other researchers of gay literature. b) The Joy of Bad Verse (1988) by Parsons which has a ~~long~~ chapter (pp. 282–291) devoted to analyzing Nicholson's works.[6] c) A highly detailed review of Nicholson's first book in The Hobby Horse (1892) by Sayle. [7] Haukur (talk) 10:31, 15 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I now have the chapter by Parsons. It has nine pages of poems and commentary, most of it on Garland and Chaplet. There's some useful information in there (like: "Love in Earnest represents the respectable face of the poet. Although the topic is love, the actual gender of the loved one is left discreetly vague", p. 283) but some of it is tongue-in-cheek commentary that we can't really do anything with. Does anyone else want to take a look? Haukur (talk) 21:10, 20 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, I still maintain that we don't meet GNG or NBIO. A Road to Stonewall doesn't sound like in-depth coverage. D'Arch Smith is still pretty fringey for a lot of stuff, and I think he would profile any 19th century pederast. So I don't think he counts much towards notability. Joy of Bad Verse, while 9 pages long, it sounds to me from your description like a lot of that is occupied by the poems and by humorous commentary, so actual coverage on the man doesn't sound that great. The Hobby Horse may, despite its age, be our best source, but it is still just one book review. A couple other sources were mentioned above, but the problems with those have been pointed out (however, I guess Sexual Heretics does have 3 paragraphs on Nicholson - don't know how I missed that - but that still isn't a lot). At this point, we seem to be at 4 (including myself) in favor of deletion and 2 in favor of keeping. I will ping Genericusername57, Flyer22 Reborn, and Johnpacklambert to make sure they see the latest findings here, so if they wish to change to keep, they can do so. If it stays at 4-2, and given the discussion had, I'm not sure if that would be enough to count as a consensus for deletion for the closer; but I would prefer to see another week of discussion rather than a no consensus close. -Crossroads- (talk) 21:24, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for updating and summing up. Your comment is a model of clarity. To add a bit: You can check A Road to Stonewall for yourself on the Internet Archive – you may need to create an account but that's quick and easy. I'll also happily send you the Joy of Bad Verse chapter if you want, that way you don't have to rely on my summary. The only thing I think I see differently here is the "he would profile any 19th century pederast" part. The thing with notability is that that's how it's created. If an eccentric scholar publishes detailed research on an eccentric topic then, ipso facto, that topic is now more notable than it was before. So it's possible that D'Arch Smith made Nicholson notable. Haukur (talk) 21:37, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Yeah, you may as well send me the chapter. -Crossroads- (talk) 21:49, 21 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I read the excerpt. It seems to me to consist of maybe 4ish paragraphs about Nicholson directly, with the rest being poetry quotations and commentary on those that we can't do much with, at least in terms of supporting article content. -Crossroads- (talk) 06:00, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Unreliable sources. Also, because of all the reasons that Crossroads1 mentioned above. Love in Earnest reads like advocacy. TrynaMakeADollar (talk) 04:15, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Source comment. This whole discussion seems to hinge on the value of Love in Earnest (1970) by D'Arch Smith. The argument that it can be dismissed as a source seems to be that you can find snippets in it that may suggest sympathy with pedophilia. The argument that it is nevertheless a suitable source is that it is used by others. It has some 150 citations on Google Scholar. A search for it there or on Google Books or on Internet Archive reveals that it is cited again and again in mainstream research on gay literature. Sometimes it's even explicitly recommended to readers, as in a book I cited above. If it's good enough for scholars in the field then it should be good enough for Wikipedia. On a more personal note, I really can sympathize with the desire to delete the Nicholson article. To abandon the dispassionate tone for a moment, I find Nicholson to be an unpleasant person to think about and reading his poems is nausea-inducing. But Wikipedia is not censored and we shouldn't write unpleasant people out of history. The Nicholson article has a number of incoming links, including from The Importance of Being Earnest. We would be serving our readers poorly by deleting it. We should, however, improve it and it should certainly be no hagiography. Haukur (talk) 10:09, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear, I still think Love in Earnest (1970) is comparable to Rind et al. 1998. Both sources have use by others for mainstream purposes, and both have questionable content. Such a source would have to be used carefully; and I commented above on why I don't think it contributes to notability. I agree with you that if kept, the article should be improved and hagiography should be avoided. I have found that in the past Wikipedia has been used to promote or whitewash persons like this. But to be clear, I would not have nominated this simply because I don't like this person (though I absolutely do not). If someone is like this and is notable, better to have an article on them, so others may know how these people are - know thy enemy. -Crossroads- (talk) 16:40, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.