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Jen Manion
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Female Husbands

by Jen Manion (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 170 ratings
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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.
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  1. ISBN-10
    1108718272
  2. ISBN-13
    978-1108718271
  3. Publication date
    May 13, 2021
  4. Language
    English
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 0.89 x 9 inches
  6. Print length
    356 pages
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

'… 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

'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

'A detailed, synoptic history of a fascinating dimension of 18th- and 19th-century cultural history in Britain and the US.' Grace Lavery, The Guardian

‘… 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

‘Female Husbands has been assembled from a wealth of firsthand historical research. The book includes a lengthy introduction, endnotes, an index, and a number of photos that illustrate everything from weddings to legal documents, all of which may be helpful to future researchers.’ Martha Miller, The Gay & Lesbian Review

‘Grounded in extensive archival research, this study by Manion (Amherst College) explores how the term ‘female husband’ - used to describe a person categorized as ‘female’ at birth but who occupied a social position as a (heterosexual) ‘man’ - went in and out of public use in the UK (1740–1840) and the US (1830–1910) … A clear, compelling, and compassionate text … Highly recommended.’ T. E. Adams, Choice

‘Female Husbands cultivates and enriches the terrain of trans history. The successes of Manion’s book hinge on its ability to chart a collective premodern and modern history of trans livelihood and archival presence … Manion models trans care work … as it further legitimates and makes known trans pasts, presents, and futures.’ Jeremy Chow, ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Book Description

A timely and comprehensive history of female husbands in Anglo-America from the eighteenth through the turn of the twentieth century.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press (May 13, 2021)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 356 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1108718272
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1108718271
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.17 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.89 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 170 ratings

About the author

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Jen Manion

Jen Manion

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Jen Manion is a social and cultural historian whose work examines the role of gender and sexuality in American life. Manion is author of Liberty’s Prisoners: Carceral Culture in Early America (Penn, 2015) and Female Husbands: A Trans History (Cambridge, 2020) and co-editor of Taking Back the Academy (Routledge, 2004) with Jim Downs. Jen has written dozens of essays and articles for popular and scholarly publications. Jen received a PhD in history from Rutgers University and a BA in history with an English minor from the University of Pennsylvania, magna cum laude. Jen is Professor of History and Sexuality, Women's and Gender Studies at Amherst College.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
170 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Charlotte
5.0 out of 5 stars LGBTQ history is tricky, but this book does a really good job of tackling it with nuance!
Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2022
Verified Purchase
I can't recommend this book enough if you really want to learn more about LGBTQ history in the US and UK! It's a really eye-opening and educational account spanning across centuries up to the 1940s. You'll learn about rules of gender and sexuality across history, how people responded to those rules being broken, how AFAB people broke them without being detected, and the importance of language in LGBTQ history.

That said, a few disclaimers...

If you're worried about this book potentially erasing lesbian history, you should know that in their book Manion is careful about avoiding applying modern language and concepts of identity to historical people who had very different perceptions of gender and sexuality. If you're looking for confirmed transgender or lesbian historical figures in this book you're going to be disappointed. Though it might be a really eye-opening read for you in regards to LBGTQ language.

This book might not be the most entertaining LGBTQ history book out there. The language tries to be as accurate and deliberate as possible which can read as pretty dull and academic. It's definitely too dry for a middle school-freshman audience, though a bookish high schooler might be able to get through it. I'd say it's college level!

If discussions of outings and violence towards LGBTQ people are difficult for you right now, I'd recommend caution. The majority of the sources for this history are the accounts and sensationalized news of these figures getting outed, sometimes intentionally but mostly violently or against their will. That being said I do think Manion does a really good job of taking those sources and putting together a compassionate but objective timeline of the subject's lives!
10 people found this helpful
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J
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2022
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Fantastic history book. A real game-changer. Very easy to read and incredibly interesting. The research is solid too. A must read for anyone interested in the history of sex
2 people found this helpful
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JJ
5.0 out of 5 stars Eye-opening masterpiece!
Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2020
Verified Purchase
I was truly blown away by Jen Manion’a masterpiece. Their detailed archival work unearths a whole plethora of new cases for trans history. The book is groundbreaking in both its content and careful methodology. At the same time, it remains an easy read that was a joy to pick up! Amazing book!
13 people found this helpful
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4.0 out of 5 stars This is informative history, presented in a neutral tone.
Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2020
Verified Purchase
I will use this as a reference work for my own writing. I found it to be informative and (presumably) factual.
6 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!
Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2020
Verified Purchase
Excellent book and wonderful research. Finished this in less than a day, couldn’t put it down. Definitely useful for future research in my Political Science program!
18 people found this helpful
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Rowena
5.0 out of 5 stars LGBTQ
Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2021
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Thank you
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Lee R. Lawing
5.0 out of 5 stars What a page turner!
Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2023
One of the best books I've read period. To hear the histories of this historic trans men and the struggles they faced, but also the triumphs they achieved despite the obstacles they faced. Whenever I hear a racist and transphobic person comment that this is all new, this transsexuality and the need to care for those individuals is a step too far, I'd advise them to read about Charles Hamilton, or Joseph Lobdell, or Albert Guelph or the countless who's lives were shared in this fascinating book. We have always been here and we always be!
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Kristine Fisher
5.0 out of 5 stars Female Husbands
Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2020
Female Husbands by Jen Manion is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in late February.

I admit, the concept of this book had me leaning forward - partway with great interest, partway gobsmacked, over the moon with the history of such a concept - then again, in the breadth of time that this emotion came over me, I had read that newspapers could forcibly out a female husband to mixed/varied results & public response. However, as shocking as a concept that was to read, this book dealt in many other topics, including the meeting and blurring between gender & sexual expression; cases of divorce between a female husband and wife as differing greatly from all other cases and jailings going on; public shaming, particularly for those not in the upper class.; books and plays being made to define and clear their status; taking someone’s voice raised in anger and embarrassment as the truth; a far greater set of options open to trans men, once they transition, like better opportune to travel, wanting more for yourself and your family, and to prove themselves as allowed to be worthy, capable and masculine.
5 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer
1.0 out of 5 stars I had expected that the book would show how the characters had made decisions about their lives..
Reviewed in Canada on January 4, 2022
Verified Purchase
I found this book to read like a history book. That was not what I had hoped for.
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AJ
5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible history, fantastically poignant and wonderfully told
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 18, 2023
Verified Purchase
Title says it all; fantastic book. A pioneering title in the field of transgender history and a phenomenal compilation.
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Aimee
5.0 out of 5 stars An accessible and compassionate account of trans histories
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 12, 2020
Verified Purchase
I really enjoyed reading this book and learning about individuals who have, to borrow a phrase from the author, transed genders over the years. The book is written in accessible language, which makes for a pleasant reading experience. I couldn't put the book down and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning more about trans histories through a sensitive and respectful lens. Many thanks to Jen Manion for bringing us this informative book!
12 people found this helpful
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