Jen Manion's Female Husbands: A Trans History is the most recent addition in a series of important books on trans history published in the last decade. Throughout the text, Manion serves up powerful and persuasive analysis that will push the field for years to come—forcing scholars to reconsider the ways in which we have categorized our gender-transgressive historical subjects.
Female Husbands focuses on the figure known by the same name, “a term that persistently circulated throughout Anglo-American culture for nearly 200 years to describe people who defied categorization” (1). The term first emerged in England in 1682 and was used frequently by journalists on both sides of the Atlantic to refer to individuals who were assigned female at birth and who assumed the role of husband to a woman. While this may at first seem like a narrow topic, Manion convincingly illustrates how a close examination of this single figure...
