Forman Brown had no intention of making history. He simply set out to write a novel that reflected his life as a young man struggling to understand his sexuality.

Brown came to U-M in 1918 from a small town in southwest Michigan. He was shy, aloof, and sexually naïve. He also was attracted to men — a feeling that terrified him — and lost his virginity to a roommate. It was a “frightening experience, yet one mixed with a new and unholy joy,” he later wrote.

Brown used his U-M experiences as the foundation for “Better Angel,” a 1933 semi-biographical novel he wrote using the pseudonym of Richard Meeker. The lead character, Kurt Gray, reflects Brown and his U-M experiences.

“When did I know I was homosexual? It was a word I never heard, but I knew I was different and I was worried,” writes Gray in telling his story.

Brown was working as a puppeteer when he wrote “Better Angel.” Greenberg Press published the novel at a time when society viewed homosexuality as a mental illness, and being known as a gay man could lead to social ostracization, jail time and suicide.

The Meeker novel depicted a different world, with gay men who lived happy, fulfilling lives.

Brown later reflected that his novel first appeared in a cultural vacuum of sorts — “there were no gay bookshops, no gay press, and no acknowledged gay community.” 

“Better Angel” was reissued in 1987 to acclaim, with one critic calling it pioneering and “possibly the first novel published in America to show male homosexuality in a positive light.”

It was then that Brown came out and came forward as the book’s author. Several years later, writing an epilogue in a new printing of his novel, he wrote:

“I find being out of that closet very good indeed. That my book is being so much more widely understood and accepted than it was 60 years ago, I find especially gratifying. And so it is that, better late than never, I have asked to have my name firmly attached to ‘Better Angel,’ once and for all.”

Brown, who earned U-M bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English, died at age 94 in 1996.

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• Department of English Language and Literature