Edmund White, Pioneer of Gay Literature, Is Dead at 85

Edmund White, who mined his own life story, including his vast and varied catalog of sexual experiences, in more than 30 books of fiction and nonfiction and hundreds of articles and essays, becoming a grandee of the New York literary world for more than half a century, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 85.

His death was confirmed by his husband, Michael Carroll, who said Mr. White had collapsed while weakened by “a vicious stomach bug.” The precise cause of death is unknown. Mr. White had been H.I.V. positive since the 1980s and survived two major strokes in 2012 and a heart attack in 2014.

Mr. White’s output was almost equally divided between fiction and nonfiction. Many of his books were critical successes, and several were best-sellers. The Chicago Tribune labeled him “the godfather of queer lit.”

He was a star almost from the beginning. The New York Times called “Forgetting Elena” (1973), about the rituals of gay life on a fictionalized Fire Island, “an astonishing first novel, obsessively fussy, and yet uncannily beautiful.” His second novel, “Nocturnes for the King of Naples” (1978), took the form of letters from a young gay man to his deceased ex-lover.