Page from an album of photographs of Herbert Charles Pollitt performing as Diane de Rougy at the Cambridge Footlights in the 1890s. Wikipedia notes “He became notorious as a Cambridge undergraduate due to his taste for Decadent art and literature, and was immortalised as the eponymous hero of an E.F. Benson novel (The Babe B.A.) in 1896. He became a very close friend of the artist Aubrey Beardsley, and had a brief but significant relationship with the occultist Aleister Crowley.”
Houghton Library, Harvard University
1958 program for the Carroll Revue, a company put together by Carroll Wallace that was based in California but toured through the Western United States and across the Pacific in the late 1950s, bringing drag shows to far-flung locales such as Sydney, Manila, and Tokyo.
An item from our current exhibition American Drag.
Houghton Library, Harvard University
Our new exhibition American Drag opens today! Click here for more information about the exhibition and scheduled curator’s tours.
From the Houghton Library Blog, early 20th century sheet music featuring male impersonators.
Sheet Music 275 and 278
Houghton Library, Harvard University
New on the Houghton Library Blog, early 20th century sheet music featuring male impersonators.
Sheet Music 273 and 280
Houghton Library, Harvard University