The Priest and the Acolyte

The short story of a tragic love between a priest and an acolyte.

John Francis Bloxam (1873–1928) was an English Uranian (the Uranians were a small and clandestine group of male homosexual poets who published works between 1858, when William Johnson Cory published Ionica, and 1930. Although most of them were English, they had counterparts in the United States and France author and churchman).

Bloxam was an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford when his story, "The Priest and the Acolyte", appeared in the sole issue of The Chameleon: a Bazaar of Dangerous and Smiling Chances, a periodical which he also served as editor.

The story details the love affair of a young Anglican priest and his lover. The affair, when discovered, triggers a suicide pact of both priest and boy. A poem, A Summer Hour, also with pederastic themes, appeared in The Artist. The contents of The Chameleon, which also included Lord Alfred Douglas's notorious poem Two Loves, would be used against Oscar Wilde in his trial.

Bloxam was a convert to Anglo-Catholicism, and became a priest.