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Dressing Up: Transvestism and Drag: The History of an Obsession
Book by Peter Ackroyd
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
151 people want to read
About the author
Peter Ackroyd
184 books1,493 followersPeter Ackroyd CBE is an English novelist and biographer with a particular interest in the history and culture of London.
Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.
Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.
Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.
Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.
Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.
His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.
From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.
Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.
In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.
Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.
Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.
Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.
Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.
Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.
His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.
From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.
Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.
In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 8, 2021
This book is very dated and often offensive. Some will find it impossible to read, and I understand that. On the other hand, I recently read a recently-published book by a heterosexual male cross-dresser who says the many historical examples in this book helped him feel more confident and helped him come to terms with himself.
The first chapter is the most offensive. It offers various different theories about why people cross-dress. The emphasis is on men who dress as women and the theories are basically different ways of trying to understand what sort of trauma or mental illness would make someone want to do that. Freud's nonsense plays a big part. Feel free to skip this chapter.
After that the offensive attitudes are toned down. The descriptions of the lives of various historical figures is quite interesting. I also greatly enjoyed the chapter on drag, in which I found out about many early artists I hadn't known about. I've been enjoying researching them on wikipedia and looking for performances on YouToob.
Many great pictures and references to follow-up on make this still a valuable resource. The author's theories, though, belong in the trash.
The first chapter is the most offensive. It offers various different theories about why people cross-dress. The emphasis is on men who dress as women and the theories are basically different ways of trying to understand what sort of trauma or mental illness would make someone want to do that. Freud's nonsense plays a big part. Feel free to skip this chapter.
After that the offensive attitudes are toned down. The descriptions of the lives of various historical figures is quite interesting. I also greatly enjoyed the chapter on drag, in which I found out about many early artists I hadn't known about. I've been enjoying researching them on wikipedia and looking for performances on YouToob.
Many great pictures and references to follow-up on make this still a valuable resource. The author's theories, though, belong in the trash.
October 7, 2017
Could not stomach this book. Did not expect it to be so homophobic, gender-centric, misogynistic, so white-privilege and heterosexual. Honestly, girl, stay away from this book--unless you are studying the erroneous state of mind behind the criminalization of homosexuality.
March 23, 2018
This cursory overview of transvestism does a decent job of summarizing the different forms of the lifestyle (hetero- vs. homosexual vs. hermaphroditic) and there are some interesting photos, drawings, frontispieces, etc. That said, it felt as if the author was merely interested in grazing the surface of a phenomenon that (one would think) would be nigh-limitless in its complexity. After some initial groundwork done to define and delineate various transvestite communities, Mr Ackroyd (or maybe "Doctor Ackroyd") deals with different ways various cultures accepted, rejected, or punished cross-dressing. "Dressing up," as the title has it, can be a way for heterosexual men to mock gay or effeminate tendencies, an expression of mixed emotions toward a domineering mother, or a method of making oneself closer to the beloved feminine ideal and the beauty of women (a little too close for some tastes). Transvestism dovetails with drag and overlaps it in confusing ways that the author attempts to clarify, though aside from drag/vaudeville having a satirical element as opposed to the fetishistic and ritualistic act of true transvestites, I'm not sure where the border lies, or where one category ends and another begins. Human sexuality is complex stuff, and Ackroyd seems to extinguish as much light as he casts.
The chapter I found most interesting, dealing with transvestite literature, was, alas, one of the shortest in the book. The book is dated, as other critics have pointed out, but that's no excuse for the short shrift that film depictions of cross-dressing are given (again, where is Edward D. Wood Jr?!)
Lastly, although I am not one for political correctness and don't sweat bullets over mis-gendering someone and ending up in a multicult gulag at some future date, even I as pale penis Putin-esque patriarch found there was a derogatory and sometimes mean-spirited undercurrent to Ackroyd's analysis. His reliance on concepts like "auto-narcissism" to explain the behavior men who wear women's clothing and other such pseudo-Freudian sorties against sympathetic subjects made me feel, at times, like I was reading a DSM manual from the late 50s instead of a brief cultural history from the late 70s. All in all, the book is a bit underdeveloped, but if you're coming to the subject cold (as I was) and are looking for a bibliography to raid, "Dressing Up" is a decent starting point. Those who already know their stuff in this area will find the book to be a mildly insulting retread, more of a cultural artifact than a work that still lives and breathes. Tepid recommendation, in any event.
The chapter I found most interesting, dealing with transvestite literature, was, alas, one of the shortest in the book. The book is dated, as other critics have pointed out, but that's no excuse for the short shrift that film depictions of cross-dressing are given (again, where is Edward D. Wood Jr?!)
Lastly, although I am not one for political correctness and don't sweat bullets over mis-gendering someone and ending up in a multicult gulag at some future date, even I as pale penis Putin-esque patriarch found there was a derogatory and sometimes mean-spirited undercurrent to Ackroyd's analysis. His reliance on concepts like "auto-narcissism" to explain the behavior men who wear women's clothing and other such pseudo-Freudian sorties against sympathetic subjects made me feel, at times, like I was reading a DSM manual from the late 50s instead of a brief cultural history from the late 70s. All in all, the book is a bit underdeveloped, but if you're coming to the subject cold (as I was) and are looking for a bibliography to raid, "Dressing Up" is a decent starting point. Those who already know their stuff in this area will find the book to be a mildly insulting retread, more of a cultural artifact than a work that still lives and breathes. Tepid recommendation, in any event.
September 8, 2022
-1 for commentary, 2 for historical perspective, 4.5 for some really great photos
November 27, 2024
A thorough guide and analysis on an interesting subject
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews