[Toward a Recognition of Androgyny] has three parts: the first, "The Hidden River of Androgyny," catalogues random appearances of androgyny in literature from Homer onward; the second examines the emergence of female central characters in the novel; the third presents Bloomsbury as real-life exemplar of "an androgynous world." (p. viii)

Unfortunately, Heilbrun's book is so poorly researched that it may disgrace the subject in the eyes of serious scholars…. "The hidden river of androgyny" is a mistaken metaphor: there is no determining link between earlier and later literary appearances of the androgyne, not in the sense that one could, for example, rightly speak of a "hidden river" of astrological and alchemical lore passing from antiquity to the present. The history of the androgyne is instead one of continually rediscovered perceptions originating in the psyche.

From the work of Jane Harrison, Heilbrun selects that great scholar's one error: her...