Book Review: Fanny & Stella
The arrest of Ernest “Stella” Boulton and Frederick “Fanny” Park in drag, at London’s Strand Theatre on 28th April 1870 led to one of the most sensational trials of the Nineteenth century. Charged with not only “the abominable crime of buggery” but also conspiracy to commit “said crime” and – “to disguise themselves as women and to frequent places of public resort, so disguised, and to thereby openly and scandalously outrage public decency and corrupt public morals.” The arrest of Fanny & Stella is the opening act in Neil McKenna’s uproarious account of the affair in Fanny & Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England (Faber & Faber, 2014). Continue reading »
