Improper Bostonians: Lesbian and Gay History from the Puritans to Playland - Softcover

History Project

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807079499 ISBN 13: 9780807079492

Publisher: Beacon Press, 1999

Synopsis

A Harvard student expelled for cross-dressing in the early 1600s, 17th-century citizens fined for same-sex cohabitation, touring female impersonators of the nineteenth century, early 20th-century women who passed as men and married other women . . .

Surprising, fun, and magnificently illustrated, Improper Bostonians is the first book to depict the last three centuries of gay and lesbian life in Boston - the American city with the longest recognized history of gay and lesbian life - and is the most comprehensive and meticulously researched gay city history ever written.

About this title

About the Author:

The History Project is a volunteer group of historians, archivists, writers, and designers committed to unearthing and preserving the history of lesbian and gay Boston.

Review:

If a picture is worth a thousand words, Improper Bostonians . . . is priceless.--The Advocate

"A rare book . . . entertaining and educational." --Renée Graham, The Boston Globe

"[Improper Bostonians] will do a necessary job of reminding or informing young people that homosexual feeling wasn't invented in the last few years, that people who loved their own sex-in Boston and elsewhere-were often responsible for the best that has been thought, said, and done in America."--Lillian Faderman, Lambda Book Report

"The book is a who's who of Boston's best-known gay figures-from poet Amy Lowell to Sen. David Walsh-but its real value lies in the way it manages to integrate gay and lesbian culture into the city's history as a whole."--Miami Herald

"The History Project has done a wonderful job of illuminating a part of the Boston saga that is at times tragic, at times hilarious, but always, well, gay."--Robert Plunket, Boston magazine

About this edition

• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0807079499
• ISBN 13: 9780807079492
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 212