Cross-dressing author, envoy, soldier and spy Charles d'Eon de Beaumont's unusual career fascinated his contemporaries and continues to attract historians, novelists, playwrights, filmmakers, image makers, cultural theorists and those concerned with manifestations of the extraordinary. D'Eon's significance as a historical figure was already being debated more than 45 years before his death. Not surprisingly, such sensational material has attracted the attention of enthusiasts, scholars and literateurs to 'the strange case of the chevalier d'Eon'. He has also attracted the attention of psychologists and sexologists, and for most of the last century his gender transformation has been viewed through a Freudian lens. His cross-dressing, it was usually assumed, must have a psychosexual explanation. Until the second half of the twentieth century the terms 'Eonist' and 'Eonism' were the standard English words for transvestites and transvestism respectively, but 'Eonism' was also, thanks to Havelock Ellis, widely regarded as a psychological condition or compulsion. However, in the mid-twentieth century, new ideas about gender-identity disorders led to d'Eon being redefined not as a transvestite, but a transsexual - a person who considers their sex to have been 'misassigned'. The essays in this collection contribute to d'Eon's rehabilitation as a figure worthy of scholarly attention and display a variety of disciplinary approaches. Drawing on new research into d'Eon's life, this volume offers original and nuanced readings of how a gender identity could come to be negotiated over time.

THE KING’S KNIGHT A mysterious cult is sacrificing beautiful young women to a demonic force that has promised them the kingdom of France in return for the blood of their victims. Only one man can save Paris from chaos and terror?the Chevalier d’Eon! From the Trade Paperback edition.

The book that was banned in England is now available through the Internet at Amazon.com for all the world to see. It's the story of Le Chevalier d'Eon, his major success as a master spy, and his tender love affair with seventeen year old Charlotte, Queen of England. Every English Royal knows but will forever deny it happened. The truth is not supposed to be told...ever. Not then. Not now. Never. Two experienced French spies tried to get to Russia's Empress Elizabeth. Both were jailed and killed. Le Chevalier d'Eon, conscripted into King Louis Fifteenth's small group called THE KING'S SECRET is successful and he becomes Empress Elizabeth's closest personal friend. He personally veers Russia away from England and into the French camp. All this takes Le Chevalier d'Eon away from the love of his life, the girl he is about to marry, young Princess Charlotte who's waiting for him to return to her in Mecklinburg, Germany. But too late. She is kidnapped and taken to England to be King George the Third's wife. She will be Queen of England. Reacting immediately to Charlotte's message that she needs help, d'Eon rushes to London's Saint James Court. Acknowledged as the greatest master spy of all time by Washington, D.C.'s INTERNATIONAL SPY MUSEUM, this novel is based on fact. Len d'Eon is from the same ancestral family as the Cavalier. He and his wife Barbara researched the story in Tonnerre, France, London's British Museum Library, La Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris and wherever the Cavalier's shoes took him. G.P.Putnam's Sons first published this novel in hardcover. It's wwww.Amazon.com/books to buy the book. Visit www.lechevalierdeon.com for continuing info.

Born in 1728, French aristocrat Charles d'Eon de Beaumont had served his country as a diplomat, soldier, and spy for fifteen years when rumors that he was a woman began to circulate in the courts of Europe. D'Eon denied nothing and was finally compelled by Louis XVI to give up male attire and live as a woman, something d'Eon did without complaint for the next three decades. Although celebrated as one of the century's most remarkable women, d'Eon was revealed, after his death in 1810, to have been unambiguously male. Gary Kates's acclaimed biography of d'Eon recreates eighteenth-century European society in brilliant detail and offers a compelling portrait of an individual who challenged its conventions about gender and identity.

At a time when issues of gender and sexuality are as prominent as they have ever been, Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe provides an authoritative exploration of the history of these deeply connected subjects over the last 250 years. Incorporating a blend of history and historiography, Annette F. Timm and Joshua A. Sanborn write engagingly on gender and sexuality in a way that illuminates our understanding of historical change and individual experience throughout Europe. The new and improved 3rd edition of this textbook now includes: · Personal vignette textboxes which shed light on key themes through individual life stories · Added material on Russia, Eastern Europe, the Holocaust and the 21st century · Historiographical updates throughout that bring the text up-to-date with new scholarship · 30 new images and maps Through 6 thematic chapters that cover democracy, capitalism, imperialism and war, Timm and Sanborn trace the social construction of gender roles, consider gender's influence on political and economic developments during the period and reflect on where European society's relationship with gender will go both now and in the future.

Alternative Histories of the Self investigates how people re-imagined the idea of the unique self in the period from 1762 to 1917. Some used the notion of the unique self to justify their gender and sexual transgression, but others rejected the notion of the unique self and instead demanded the sacrifice of the self for the good of society. The substantial introductory chapter places these themes in the cultural context of the long nineteenth century, but the book as a whole represents an alternative method for studying the self. Instead of focusing on the thoughts of great thinkers, this book explores how five unusual individuals twisted conventional ideas of the self as they interpreted their own lives. These subjects include: * The Chevalièr/e d'Eon, a renegade diplomat who was outed as a woman * Anne Lister, who wrote coded diaries about her attraction to women * Richard Johnson, who secretly criticized the empire that he served * James Hinton, a Victorian doctor who publicly advocated philanthropy and privately supported polygamy * Edith Ellis, a socialist lesbian who celebrated the 'abnormal' These five case studies are skilfully used to explore how the notion of the unique individual was used to make sense of sexual or gender non-conformity. Yet this queer reading will go beyond same-sex desire to analyse the issue of secrets and privacy; for instance, what stigma did men who practiced or advocated unconventional relationships with women incur? Finally, Clark ties these unusual lives to the wider questions of ethics and social justice: did those who questioned sexual conventions challenge political traditions as well? This is a highly innovative study that will be of interest to intellectual historians of modern Britain and Europe, as well as historians of gender and sexuality. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

A law professor and cultural critic offers an eye-opening exploration of the laws of fashion throughout history, from the middle ages to the present day, examining the canons, mores and customs of clothing rules that we often take for granted