Denton Welch: Maiden Voyage

Maiden Voyage is an account of author Denton Welch’s sixteenth year, when he ran away from his English public school and was then sent to Shanghai to live with his father. The book was Welch’s first and created a sensation on publication in 1943; its frank description of public schoolboy life forced publisher Herbert Read to initially seek advice from libel lawyers. Even Winston Churchill’s private secretary gossiped in a letter that, “the book was reeking with homosexuality? I think I must get it.” Today, Welch’s expressions of sexuality may seem more demure than outrageous, but his portrayal of the passions and humiliations of adolescence is graphic. As in all of Welch’s novels, it is the precisely realized details of the author’s physical and social surroundings that make the book such a remarkable journey.