Bachelors of Art: Edward Perry Warren and the Lewes House Brotherhood

In the 1890s, Edward Perry Warren, a wealthy American who loved art and hated women, purchased a Georgian house in East Sussex, England, and there surrounded himself with a splendid art collection and a group of young men with whom he hoped to live by the principles of ``Uranian Love,'' an ill-defined ideal of platonic affection. Warren's closest companion was John Marshall, who aided him in his search for antiquities and later advised the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts on a number of major purchases. Others in the group were John Fothergill, who dabbled in art and subsequently became a famous innkeeper; the flamboyant Matthew Prichard,ok a friend and adviser of Boston art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner; and pretentious, snobbish Harold Parsons, who became a consultant to several important museums. All eventually disappointed Warren by leaving his circle of chosen aesthetes--some even got married. In his dense, extensively researched text, Sox ( Unmasking the Forger ) provides too many incidental biographical details about each of his subjects, but readers interested in the history of art collecting will learn much here. Photos. (Sept.)