Fanny and Stella: The Two Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England

London, April 1870: Fanny and Stella were no ordinary Victorian women. Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton were young men who sometimes liked to dress as women. Stella was the most beautiful female impersonator of her day, and Fanny was her plainer, more down-to-earth companion.

But as they roamed London in and out of drag, the Metropolitan Police were plotting their downfall. Fanny and Stella were arrested in full drag at the Strand Theatre and appeared the next day at Bow Street Magistrates Court as a huge crowd of onlookers gathered outside, alternatively cheering and booing them.

Their sensational trial in Westminster Hall captured the world’s imagination. With a cast of peers and politicians, detectives and drag queens, Neil McKenna will tell their dazzling and enthralling story.

Neil McKenna is an award-winning journalist and author. After a distinguished and ground-breaking career in Britain’s gay press and in national newspapers, Neil researched and wrote On the Margins: Men Who Have Sex With Men in the Developing World, the findings of which were formally adopted by the UN. Neil then turned his attention to gay history and wrote the acclaimed biographies: The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde and Fanny and Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England. He lives in a very sleepy corner of North Norfolk.