An all-star list of literary virgins

A recent New Yorker review of poet Giacomo Leopardi included this colorful detail about his life:

"His deformity effectively barred him from having any sort of romantic life, except for the few unrequited loves recorded in his poems, and he probably died a virgin."

This got the folks at the L Magazine wondering about what other famous (or infamous) artistic virgins were out there. For starters, there's Hans Christian Andersen, English philosopher Herbert Spencer (who said he had a “tremendous glacier” within) and collage artist and experimental filmmaker Joseph Cornell. We'll never know precisely why these delicate flowers never blossomed, but we can learn a few lessons from the lives virgins (all of which were originally mentioned in the New Yorker.)

Conclusions:

1. Life is short, but art is long (all these guys are dead).

2. So is virginity, apparently: it will follow you to the grave.

3. You should avoid the culture pages of the New Yorker if you are a teenage boy already terrified that you're never going to have sex.