Fanny & Stella

WITH HIS MOST SPLENDID NEW ENTERTAINMENT

FANNY & STELLA

faber and faber presents the young men

Featuring:

TWO INFAMOUS VICTORIAN CROSS-DRESSERS AND THEIR SCANDALOUS TRIAL

The cast shall include:

DETECTIVES, POLITICIANS, PROSTITUTES, THEATRE OWNERS, DOCTORS
AND DRAG QUEENS

A COLOURFUL, THRILLING VICTORIAN PEEPSHOW, EXPOSING THE STARTLING UNDERBELLY OF 19TH CENTURY LONDON

 

THE STRAND THEATRE 28TH APRIL 1870:

The arrest of the flamboyantly dressed Miss Fanny Park and Miss Stella Boulton precipitated a sensational show trial that shocked and titillated Victorian London in equal measure.  For the alluring Fanny and Stella were no ordinary young women.  Far from it.  In fact, they were young men who liked to dress as women.  As the trial of ‘the Young Men in Women’s Clothes’ unfolded, Fanny and Stella’s extraordinary lives as wives and daughters, actresses and whores were revealed to an incredulous public.

Meticulously researched and dazzlingly written, Fanny & Stella is an enthralling tour-de-force for all fans of quirky narrative non-fiction.

 

 THE WHOLE ENTERTAINMENT WILL BE FOUND CAMP, INSTRUCTIVE, TRAGIC AND COMIC BY TURNS

Available from

 

Fanny & Stella; An Introduction

Neil McKenna introduces Fanny and Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England from Faber and Faber on Vimeo.

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Listen to Neil reading from Fanny & Stella

Here are two extracts from Fanny & Stella  

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The Fanny & Stella Gallery

Here are a number of photos and illustrations of Fanny and Stella which are included in the book.   29th April 1870: An excited crowd looks on as Ernest Boulton and Frederick Park in full drag leave Bow Street Magistrates’ Court the morning after their arrest at the Strand Theatre.   ‘And such a stock of togs was there.’ The police raid Fanny and Stella’s secret dressing-rooms in Wakefield Street and confiscate their entire drag wardrobe.   Stella Boulton, ‘the most wonderful impersonator of female character ever before the public’ with ‘the most perfect soprano voice’,  photographed in Scarborough in October, 1868.   ‘Rose of the Garden, blushing and gay’ The captivating Stella Boulton dressed as a man.   Dressed in silk and suitably padded, bewigged and with a very generous application of paint, Fanny made a handsome woman.   Fanny (left) – ‘a gabbling, good-natured, prattling, gossiping, charming young man’, photographed with an unknown gentleman in Chelmsford in 1868.   Fanny, with her ‘sterner features’, had a natural bent for playing domineering duchesses and dowagers of a certain age.   A love triangle: Fanny (standing) and Stella (front) with Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton.   Stella and Fanny dressed in character in the sort of drawing-room …

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