"Before Trans is an exceedingly well-written, layered, and compelling account of three overlapping gender-variant biographies. These individuals' stories have never been told together, and Rachel Mesch's beautiful braiding of their lives and loves, their desires and disappointments, offers a fresh and original take on trans history."—Jack Halberstam, author of The Queer Art of Failure The Male Malady Before Trans represents a vital contribution to humanities scholarship, French studies, and gender and sexuality studies. This thoughtful and informed work deftly demonstrates how much the past has to teach us about what we think of as ultra-contemporary issues."—Rhonda Garelick, author of Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History Before Trans pushes feminist history beyond the binary, showing how we can better locate and understand past trans practices."—Leah DeVun, author of The Shape of Sex Before Trans is lucid, compelling, and a must-read for specialists in trans history as well as gender history more broadly. Using modern trans frameworks to understand the past, Rachel Mesch gives us much to contemplate in her analysis of gender identity's complex history."—Emily Skidmore, author of True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Publishers Weekly EuropeNow Washington Independent Review of Books The Gay & Lesbian Review/Worldwide Before Trans is its promise of more; a taste of things to come."—Frankie Dytor, Review 31 Canadian Journal of History Before Trans , is a must-read for experts and students of gender studies for years to come, opening the door to more scholarship on gender non-conforming historical figures."—Anne E. Linton, Nineteenth-Century French Studies avant la letter category to show how, each in their own way, these three authors embodied, researched, archived, and narrated gender creative lives."—Anna Kłosowska, H-France Forum Before Trans is a hugely significant book for a number of reasons. It provides one of the first explorations of French history from a trans perspective and shows how queer perspectives can be brought to bear on the field. Its willingness to resist simply placing its subjects into new boxes highlights the success of Mesch's project to analyze and understand the possibilities for telling new gender stories in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France."—Andrew Israel Ross, H-France Forum H-France Forum
"Contrasting and complementary, Mesch's three literary biographies form a remarkable and lasting contribution to the fields of nineteenth-century French, trans, gender, and feminist studies. The book frees its three protagonists from their previous feminist avant la letter category to show how, each in their own way, these three authors embodied, researched, archived, and narrated gender creative lives."
H-France Forum - Anna Kłosowska
"As Mesch shows us, there is a prehistory of transgender, but there is also a history of trans* narrative making through history. Pushing against binarized gender categories through previous French narratives is itself a historical narrative—another story to be told through the evidence of queer and trans* ephemera."
Canadian Journal of History - Todd W. Reeser
"Before Trans is a hugely significant book for a number of reasons. It provides one of the first explorations of French history from a trans perspective and shows how queer perspectives can be brought to bear on the field. Its willingness to resist simply placing its subjects into new boxes highlights the success of Mesch's project to analyze and understand the possibilities for telling new gender stories in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France."
H-France Forum - Andrew Israel Ross
"Before Trans is an exceedingly well-written, layered, and compelling account of three overlapping gender-variant biographies. These individuals' stories have never been told together, and Rachel Mesch's beautiful braiding of their lives and loves, their desires and disappointments, offers a fresh and original take on trans history."
author of The Queer Art of Failure - Jack Halberstam
"This fascinating exploration of three remarkable lives explores a wide range of gender outlaw behavior long before the term was invented. Consistently provocative, deeply researched, and amply illustrated, this book will challenge us to think more clearly about what gender nonconformity meant and did 'before trans.'"
author of The Male Malady - Margaret Waller
"Using queer theory in practice, [this] immensely readable book provides excellently researched biographies strung together to show complex worlds where gender norms mattered, but could be transgressed."
EuropeNow - Louie Dean Valencia-García
"Mesch asks a question that has often vexed historians of this era: how are we supposed to categorise the seemingly endless number of people who took divergent paths from those expected of the period? Rather than place this within the familiar rhetoric of ambiguity, deviance and performativity, Mesch turns to the lessons of trans scholarship... In many ways, the greatest contribution ofBefore Trans is its promise of more; a taste of things to come."
Review 31 - Frankie Dytor
"Mesch's pathbreaking book, Before Trans , is a must-read for experts and students of gender studies for years to come, opening the door to more scholarship on gender non-conforming historical figures."
Nineteenth-Century French Studies - Anne E. Linton
"Original, impeccably researched, and well written, Before Trans represents a vital contribution to humanities scholarship, French studies, and gender and sexuality studies. This thoughtful and informed work deftly demonstrates how much the past has to teach us about what we think of as ultra-contemporary issues."
author of Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History - Rhonda Garelick
"Mesch's far-reaching biographical and historical study complements previous work on Rachilde and fleshes out enlightening and interesting information about the lives of the three women writers Jane Dieulafoy, Rachilde, and Marc de Montifaud, while emphasizing their exploration of their own gender identities, and most important for those of us in literary studies, the relation of their writing to that exploration."
H-France Forum - Dorothy Kelly
"Rachel Mesch adroitly walks the methodological tightrope of examining historical characters through the lens of transgender analysis, yet accepting their gender originality. Her writing is theoretically savvy without being academically ponderous. Mesch's detailed and textured survey of these women and their writings does full justice to their unique talent and complex psyches."
The Gay & Lesbian Review/Worldwide - Vernon Rosario
"Before Trans is lucid, compelling, and a must-read for specialists in trans history as well as gender history more broadly. Using modern trans frameworks to understand the past, Rachel Mesch gives us much to contemplate in her analysis of gender identity's complex history."
author of True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the Twentieth Century - Emily Skidmore
"Through deeply personal stories of complex individuals, Rachel Mesch gives us a much-needed history of transgender 'before' our modern definitions and categories of gender identity. Joining an exciting new wave of scholarship on gender non-conforming historical figures, Before Trans pushes feminist history beyond the binary, showing how we can better locate and understand past trans practices."
author of The Shape of Sex - Leah DeVun
"Using queer theory in practice, [this] immensely readable book provides excellently researched biographies strung together to show complex worlds where gender norms mattered, but could be transgressed."
EuropeNow - Louie Dean Valencia-García
