Early books alluding to Aspergers

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Yeah, I know, I should just call it "autism" because dammit, it's a spectrum now and the latest DSM removed "Aspergers" - but putting it in historical context, going back to the 1990s, it was Aspergers. But don't you (didn't you?) find it interesting, looking in books from that decade which alluded to or obliquely mentioned Aspergers? The two in particular that I can think of, both published in 1995, are "An Anthropologist on Mars" by Oliver Sacks, and "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman.

The first one by Sacks actually mentions Aspergers by name a couple of times, within the text on autism writ large (where he talks about his meeting with Temple Grandin). He describes the fundamentals, like the mind-blindness and social challenges, and some of the gifts that accompany it. Funny thing was, my mom first told me about this book when it came out and I hadn't been diagnosed till 2001 - wonder if I would have made the connection. She told me about how she was amazed at the story of the surgeon with Tourrettes, but she never told me that the description of "this Aspergers thing" reminded her of me, so again I slipped under the radar. Kind of eerie that an AS diagnosis almost was within reach six years earlier!!

The other one, more famous I believe, about Emotional Intelligence - this doesn't mention Aspergers by name, but talks about kids who seem emotionally distant or disconnected and cannot seem to readily absorb emotional signals from others - he said something about how these kids will not fare well into adulthood. It's kind of eerie, once again, but pretty clear that this description fits somebody with Aspergers to a tee.

Other than that, I can't think of any other "early" books alluding to Aspergers...I'm sure there have been a few even before that, like in the 80s or 70s, which never really picked up much steam among academics or psych professionals to make it into the DSM. My suspicion is that such psychological study is deprioritized in favour of that which causes criminal proclivities, like psychopathy or schizophrenia. Who knows. Yes, there is Hans Aspergers paper, and Lorna Wing's research paper, but I'm thinking more mainstream publications that obliquely or sort of mention Aspergers.

Can you think of any? What are your thoughts on them?

The earliest novel I know of in which the protagonist is clearly a person on the spectrum is "No Highway" published in the 1940s, author is the novelist Neville Shute. Still worth reading, fascinating to see how clear the description is, even though Shute may not have known of any early work by Kanner and Asperger.

It's about a misfit aircraft engineer with radical ideas about metal fatigue, social communication problems and general "oddity" including special interests and a dislike of socialising - novel was so far ahead of its time, particularly as metal fatigue as causal of some plane crashes was not well established when Shute wrote the novel and regarded as unlikely by conventional aircraft engineers of the time. It still reads well 70 years later.

I always thought Jayne Eyre seemed very aspie to me. Of course, that was a few centuries too early, but it's interesting to see the patterns that existed before the diagnosis came to be.

Anyway, not to hijack the thread! I know this isn't quite what you meant.

In a library in 1993 I found a definition of Asperger's in a medical dictionary, just a paragraph.
Also the first time I saw the word "Asperger's" was back in 1991, in an article in a learning disabilities newsletter.

The subject of Dr. Virginia Axline's book, Dibs in Search of Self, even though this took place in the early '60's.

I really enjoyed "An Anthropologist on Mars", even much more than his earlier book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat".

I'll have to find myself a copy of "No Highway". It sounds interesting.

Camus: "The stranger". Main character Meursault is autistic: Oblivious to many of his own motives and very much out of touch with reality as percieved by others.
He makes friends with a vicious old man because "that man never did him any harm". He leaves his old mother in a terrible home without checking first....not because he doesn´t love her, but because he takes it, that she´ll be fed and probably be ok. In the end, he shoots an arab on the beach, because "he was blinded by the sun" and he really can´t say, why he shot in the first place. On death row he makes an effort to wake up, face and repent his sleep-walking and die, concious of every second.
The aim of this book is, of course, purely existentialistic, but Meursault is essentially an autistic character. Probably Aspie.

This is obviously not conclusive, and maybe much older than what you're wanting here, but there's this snippet about a chap called Swammerdan, from 1792:

"He often attempted too much accuracy in his description of minute things." - John Hunter [Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 1792 82, p.128]

http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/ ... l.pdf+html

In the first couple of pages, Hunter goes into something of a rant about this. Maybe it's an early example of a neurotypical criticising an Aspie for indulging in too much hyperfocus?