Queer Enlightenments: A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers, and Homemakers

From a ground-breaking historian with a refreshing new voice, an overlooked history detailing eleven stories of eighteenth-century queer people who lived extraordinary lives of resistance, joy, and sometimes sorrow 

For many, queer history began in 1960s New York with the Stonewall Riots, as though nothing and no one had ever come before. In this evocative, wonderfully lively correction to the historical record, Dr. Anthony Delaney uncovers a new era of queer history, illuminating the hard-fought lives of remarkable queer people in the “long eighteenth-century” that have long been lost to the annals of time. 

Unfolding between 1726 and 1836, Queer Enlightenments is an inviting, at times deeply affecting, journey through the taverns, prisons, and cruising grounds of a bygone era and into the lives of aristocrats, tradesmen, and sex workers who won or lost their lives in the pursuit of sexual freedom. In London, Mother Clap’s famous Holborn coffee house is open to all comers, a place of companionship and community, until a tip-off leads to a midnight raid. The celebrated Chevalier d’Eon, soldier, diplomat and spy, challenges a rival to a fencing match. The sweepstake is not over who will win, but over whether the Chevalier is a man or a woman. Two women, later to be famous for the utopia they created in a Welsh country town, elope to be together in a dramatic escape from their disapproving Irish families. At the court of King George, a silver-tongued noblewoman remarked of one of Queen Caroline’s confidants, “the world consists of men, women, and Herveys.” A Black sex worker endures a degrading trial that labels her the New York “Man-Monster”— but between the lines of its transcripts can be found traces of her life, one of acceptance, resistance, and indomitable spirit.

A dazzling work of restorative history, Queer Enlightenments traces the stories of people daring to challenge society’s expectations, unearthing archives and court records to reveal the tragedies and the joys of queer life three centuries ago.

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