Jumping Through Hoops: Performing Gender in the Nineteenth-Century Circus

by Betsy Golden Kellem

Jumping Through Hoops reveals the hidden history of early female circus performers: boundary-breaking women like Lavinia Warren, known as The Queen of Beauty; Millie-Christine McKoy, the Two-Headed Nightingale; and Patty Astley, the mother of the modern circus. These astounding female and gender-nonconforming artists wrestled snakes, performed magic tricks with electricity, and walked across waterfalls on tightropes, shattering taboos by performing in public at a time when “respectable” women were mostly confined to their homes.

Betsy Golden Kellem deftly explores how major forces in the long nineteenth century combined to create the uniquely American spectacle of the traveling circus. During the transformation of the circus from scrappy “mud shows” to a major international business, these extraordinary circus women challenged contemporary ideas of femininity, creating new possibilities for women far beyond the big top.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

280 pages, Paperback

Published June 10, 2025

Reviews

[Shannon Heaton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did enjoy this book very much and I look forward to seeing more work from her on this groundbreaking topic.