from Part V - Afterlives and Future Fields
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 October 2025
This chapter introduces trans studies to Michael Field, and Michael Field to trans studies. It sketches out a range of critical approaches to Victorian trans studies and considers how Michael Field’s life and work enrich and complicate this emerging field. It introduces Mo Moulton’s ‘non-binary methodology’ as a framework to consider Michael Field’s many gendered selves, for instance, Edith Cooper as ‘Henry Boy’ in their diaries and correspondence. The chapter then turns to the transgender phenomena that proliferate Michael Field’s published work, using three case studies: Tiresias’ transfeminine power in Long Ago (1889), the condemnation of cross-dressing in The Race of Leaves (1901), and the artistry of transition in The World at Auction (1898).
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