Female Husbands: A Trans History

Author:   Jen Manion (Amherst College, Massachusetts)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
ISBN:  

9781108483803


Pages:   350
Publication Date:   26 March 2020
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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Female Husbands: A Trans History


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Overview

Long before people identified as transgender or lesbian, there were female husbands and the women who loved them. Female husbands - people assigned female who transed gender, lived as men, and married women - were true queer pioneers. Moving deftly from the colonial era to just before the First World War, Jen Manion uncovers the riveting and very personal stories of ordinary people who lived as men despite tremendous risk, danger, violence, and threat of punishment. Female Husbands weaves the story of their lives in relation to broader social, economic, and political developments in the United States and the United Kingdom while also exploring how attitudes towards female husbands shifted in relation to transformations in gender politics and women's rights, ultimately leading to the demise of the category of 'female husband' in the early twentieth century. Groundbreaking and influential, Female Husbands offers a dynamic, varied, and complex history of the LGBTQ past.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jen Manion (Amherst College, Massachusetts)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.90cm , Height: 2.40cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.650kg
ISBN:  

9781108483803


ISBN 10:   1108483801
Pages:   350
Publication Date:   26 March 2020
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

Table of Contents

Introduction: extraordinary lives; Part I. UK Husbands, 1740–1840: 1. The first female husband; 2. The pillar of the community; 3. The sailors and soldiers; 4. The wives; Part II. US Husbands,1830–1910: 5. The workers; 6. The activists; 7. The criminalized poor; 8. The end of a category; Conclusion: sex trumps gender; Epilogue: the first female-to-male transsexual.

Reviews

'In this painstakingly researched study, Jen Manion opens a window into a previously unseen dimension of the British and American past. Female Husbands explores the lives of people who transed gender, lived as men, and married women between the colonial period and World War I, situating them in the context of broader political and social developments including changing understandings of gender and women's rights. The book is a stunning and path breaking achievement.' Drew Faust, President Emeritus and the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor, Harvard University, Massachusetts 'Female Husbands combines intellectual rigor and impeccable historical research with sensitivity and even imagination to illuminate this fascinatingly varied cohort of gender rebels.' Emma Donoghue, author of Room and Akin '... fascinating ... extremely thought-provoking.' Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times '... fascinating ... extremely thought-provoking.' Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times


'An altogether fresh and innovative take on centuries-old identities and relationships, Female Husbands shows its readers how the most forward-thinking and progressive conceptions of gender and sexuality can find their origins in the past. ... Manion's female husbands are brought to life by energetic prose and an insistence on their continued cultural and political impact.' Hannah Roche, Times Literary Supplement 'Female Husbands is a powerful work not only because Manion insists on taking the past on its own terms, but also because she refuses to tell her reader if she is reporting on a history that can be made legible to our 21st-century ideas about sexuality, sex, or gender identity.' Los Angeles Review of Books '... a detailed, synoptic history of a fascinating dimension of 18th- and 19th-century cultural history in Britain and the US.' Grace Lavery, The Guardian 'The challenges of interpreting the fragments of evidence about these people's lives, written by those who had the social and economic order of marriage to defend, becomes in Jen Manion's hands a masterclass in historical rigor, empathy, and craft.' Catherine Baker, History Today 'Manion's triumph is to treat with an openhanded and flexible approach a series of lives that resisted categories and flourished through ambiguity.' Karen Harvey, BBC History Magazine 'An absolutely stunning deep-dive into historical transgressions of gender.' Manhattan Book Review '... a treasure trove of historical insights... The research makes a refreshing intervention in the fraught debates about the intersections between queer, lesbian, feminist, and trans histories.' Heike Bauer, Times Higher Education 'In this painstakingly researched study, Jen Manion opens a window into a previously unseen dimension of the British and American past. Female Husbands explores the lives of people who transed gender, lived as men, and married women between the colonial period and World War I, situating them in the context of broader political and social developments including changing understandings of gender and women's rights. The book is a stunning and path breaking achievement.' Drew Faust, President Emeritus and the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor, Harvard University, Massachusetts 'Female Husbands combines intellectual rigor and impeccable historical research with sensitivity and even imagination to illuminate this fascinatingly varied cohort of gender rebels.' Emma Donoghue, author of Room and Akin '... fascinating ... extremely thought-provoking.' Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times 'Jen Manion offers a spectacular historical survey of people assigned female at birth who went on to live as men and marry women. In doing so, they demonstrate that contemporary attention to trans issues is just the tip of a vast, submerged legacy of gender variance, traversing both sides of the English-speaking transatlantic world, that stretches back hundreds of years.' Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History and The Transgender Studies Reader 'Jen Manion mines Anglo-American newspapers, books, and pamphlets and shows us how 'female husbands' confounded conceptions of sex, gender, and sexuality. An engaging account of the unruly history of 'transing', and the surveillance of it, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.' Joanne Meyerowitz, author of How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States


'In this painstakingly researched study, Jen Manion opens a window into a previously unseen dimension of the British and American past. Female Husbands explores the lives of people who transed gender, lived as men, and married women between the colonial period and World War I, situating them in the context of broader political and social developments including changing understandings of gender and women's rights. The book is a stunning and path breaking achievement.' Drew Faust, President Emeritus and the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor, Harvard University, Massachusetts 'Female Husbands combines intellectual rigor and impeccable historical research with sensitivity and even imagination to illuminate this fascinatingly varied cohort of gender rebels.' Emma Donoghue, author of Room and Akin


'In this painstakingly researched study, Jen Manion opens a window into a previously unseen dimension of the British and American past. Female Husbands explores the lives of people who transed gender, lived as men, and married women between the colonial period and World War I, situating them in the context of broader political and social developments including changing understandings of gender and women's rights. The book is a stunning and path breaking achievement.' Drew Faust, President Emeritus and the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor, Harvard University, Massachusetts 'Female Husbands combines intellectual rigor and impeccable historical research with sensitivity and even imagination to illuminate this fascinatingly varied cohort of gender rebels.' Emma Donoghue, author of Room and Akin '... fascinating ... extremely thought-provoking.' Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times 'Jen Manion offers a spectacular historical survey of people assigned female at birth who went on to live as men and marry women. In doing so, they demonstrate that contemporary attention to trans issues is just the tip of a vast, submerged legacy of gender variance, traversing both sides of the English-speaking transatlantic world, that stretches back hundreds of years.' Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History and The Transgender Studies Reader 'Jen Manion mines Anglo-American newspapers, books, and pamphlets and shows us how 'female husbands' confounded conceptions of sex, gender, and sexuality. An engaging account of the unruly history of 'transing', and the surveillance of it, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.' Joanne Meyerowitz, author of How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States 'Female Husbands is a treasure trove of historical insights.' Heike Bauer, Times Higher Education 'Manion's triumph in Female Husbands is to treat with an openhanded and flexible approach a series of lives that resisted categories and flourished through ambiguity.' Karen Harvey, BBC History Magazine 'A masterclass in historical rigour, empathy, and craft.' Catherine Baker, History Today '... fascinating ... extremely thought-provoking.' Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times 'In this painstakingly researched study, Jen Manion opens a window into a previously unseen dimension of the British and American past. Female Husbands explores the lives of people who transed gender, lived as men, and married women between the colonial period and World War I, situating them in the context of broader political and social developments including changing understandings of gender and women's rights. The book is a stunning and path breaking achievement.' Drew Faust, President Emeritus and the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor, Harvard University, Massachusetts 'Female Husbands combines intellectual rigor and impeccable historical research with sensitivity and even imagination to illuminate this fascinatingly varied cohort of gender rebels.' Emma Donoghue, author of Room and Akin 'Jen Manion offers a spectacular historical survey of people assigned female at birth who went on to live as men and marry women. In doing so, they demonstrate that contemporary attention to trans issues is just the tip of a vast, submerged legacy of gender variance, traversing both sides of the English-speaking transatlantic world, that stretches back hundreds of years.' Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History and The Transgender Studies Reader 'Jen Manion mines Anglo-American newspapers, books, and pamphlets and shows us how 'female husbands' confounded conceptions of sex, gender, and sexuality. An engaging account of the unruly history of 'transing', and the surveillance of it, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.' Joanne Meyerowitz, author of How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States 'Female Husbands is a treasure trove of historical insights.' Heike Bauer, Times Higher Education 'Manion's triumph in Female Husbands is to treat with an openhanded and flexible approach a series of lives that resisted categories and flourished through ambiguity.' Karen Harvey, BBC History Magazine 'A masterclass in historical rigour, empathy, and craft.' Catherine Baker, History Today


'In this painstakingly researched study, Jen Manion opens a window into a previously unseen dimension of the British and American past. Female Husbands explores the lives of people who transed gender, lived as men, and married women between the colonial period and World War I, situating them in the context of broader political and social developments including changing understandings of gender and women's rights. The book is a stunning and path breaking achievement.' Drew Faust, President Emeritus and the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor, Harvard University, Massachusetts 'Female Husbands combines intellectual rigor and impeccable historical research with sensitivity and even imagination to illuminate this fascinatingly varied cohort of gender rebels.' Emma Donoghue, author of Room and Akin '... fascinating ... extremely thought-provoking.' Christina Patterson, The Sunday Times 'Jen Manion offers a spectacular historical survey of people assigned female at birth who went on to live as men and marry women. In doing so, they demonstrate that contemporary attention to trans issues is just the tip of a vast, submerged legacy of gender variance, traversing both sides of the English-speaking transatlantic world, that stretches back hundreds of years.' Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History and The Transgender Studies Reader 'Jen Manion mines Anglo-American newspapers, books, and pamphlets and shows us how 'female husbands' confounded conceptions of sex, gender, and sexuality. An engaging account of the unruly history of 'transing', and the surveillance of it, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.' Joanne Meyerowitz, author of How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States 'Female Husbands is a treasure trove of historical insights.' Heike Bauer, Times Higher Education 'Manion's triumph in Female Husbands is to treat with an openhanded and flexible approach a series of lives that resisted categories and flourished through ambiguity.' Karen Harvey, BBC History Magazine 'A masterclass in historical rigour, empathy, and craft.' Catherine Baker, History Today 'A detailed, synoptic history of a fascinating dimension of 18th- and 19th-century cultural history in Britain and the US.' Grace Lavery, The Guardian 'An altogether fresh and innovative take on centuries-old identities and relationships, Female Husbands shows its readers how the most forward-thinking and progressive conceptions of gender and sexuality can find their origins in the past.' Hannah Roche, The Times Literary Supplement '... Manion's approach to their subjects reminds readers that those who transed gender existed within a kind of heritage and tradition despite the seemingly singular and spectacular nature of their experiences. Indeed, Female Husbands challenges the spectacular framing of the titular husbands by contemporaneous material over and over, examining the shared tropes and cultural anxieties that animated these accounts so as to call their veracity into question. In doing so, Manion builds a framework for examining transness and narrative tropes surrounding transness both historically and in the modern day.' Julia Ftacek, Global Maritime History


Author Information

Jen Manion is Associate Professor of History at Amherst College, the author of Liberty's Prisoners: Carceral Culture in Early America (2015), and a lifelong LGBTQ rights advocate.

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