Before Gender – UK Edition

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Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950

Manchester University Press
June 2025

Discover the trailblazing lives of thirty trans people who will radically change everything you’ve been told about transgender history.

Highlighting influential individuals from 1850 to 1950 who are all but unknown today, Eli Erlick shares thirty remarkable stories from romance to rebellion and mystery to murder. These narratives chronicle the grit, joy and survival of trans people long before gender became an everyday term.

Organised into four parts, paralleling today’s controversies over gender identity – kids, activists, workers and athletes – Before Gender introduces figures whose forgotten stories transform the discussion. These ground-breaking histories include two of the first teens to access gender-affirming medical treatment, a countess who instigated an LGBTQ+ riot forty years before Stonewall and the greatest female billiards player of the 1910s.

Bold and visionary, Erlick’s debut uncovers these lost stories from the depths of the archives to narrate trans lives in a way that has never been attempted before.

Mark and David Ferrow
Effie Smith
Masoud El Amaratly
Ray Leonard
Mabel Stanley
Emma Heinrich
Willie Ray
Sally-Tom
Gerda von Zobeltitz
Carl Crawford
Mollie Wilson
Muksamse’lapli
Sadie Acosta
Georgia Black
Okiyo
Maude Milbourne
Josephine Robinson
Elise Marks
Albín Pleva
John Berger
Alfred Grouard
Ann Storcy
Frank Williams
Frances Anderson
Agustín Rodríguez
Stefan Pekar
Bill Winters
Léon Caurla and Pierre Brésolles