Queer Georgians is the newest release from Dr Anthony Delaney, having just hit shelves earlier this month. It is a work of passion and detailed research that brings to light the hidden and forgotten stories of LGBTQ+ people in a time filled with decadence, art and cultural upheaval. Among the stories is that of two women from Kilkenny who disappear in the night to start a utopian homestead in Wales, and GCN spoke to the Irish author to find out more.

“ The new book is Queer Georgians, A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers and Homemakers. It tells the history of queer people from 1714 to 1836, so just before Queen Victoria comes to the throne, and it is a look at a various spread of histories across Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, America and France,” Delaney explained.

During that time period, it of course was not easy to be queer, and there are some stories in the book that reflect that. However, Delaney was also keen to centre histories of “joy and comfort and love and community and camaraderie” in the book, which were a means of resistance in the 1700s.

The author was inspired to write the book after he noticed that during the 18th century, particularly in the Georgian period, they were “asking a lot of the same questions that we are today about gender and sexuality and sex”. However, “ Unlike us. They’re not demanding answers to those questions. And that was what fascinated me,” he shared.

“That’s not to say that the Georgians were totally accepting and tolerant of same-sex attraction or gender non-conformity; it was far more complex than that. But it wasn’t until the Victorians come later in the 19th century that we really see this demand for answers and categorisation, and through categorisation, control.

“So I was interested in how the Georgians were experiencing and articulating the messiness of people’s identities and their experiences, and seeing how we might be able to apply some of those questions without demanding answers to our own experiences.”

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As mentioned, one particular story of interest is that of Sally Ponsonby and Eleanor Butler – two Anglo-Irish women. After they met in Kilkenny, they decided they wanted to spend their lives together, and eventually they became the Ladies of Llangollen in Wales.

They are said to have inspired the famous Anne Lister to try and take a wife of her own. When she visited them, she knew she wanted to emulate their lifestyle, and said, “The key to their story lies in that feverish dream called youth”.

That became the part that interested Delaney the most. 

“It was personal as well because I am from Kilkenny and it was a place that I felt that I didn’t necessarily always belong as a queer person, and so to uncover that part… To really delve into queer Kilkenny in the 1770s and 1780s was a proper gift for me and actually quite empowering.”

He added, “I left Ireland when I was I think 20/21, and it really gave me back this idea of harmony when it comes to my Irishness and my queerness because I hadn’t always felt that.”

Delaney continued, “I hope that people experience these histories in a similar way to how I did while I was writing this, in a really empowering way, because it’s an invitation for us as queer people to come back into histories that we have been denied and histories that people have deliberately taken from us.” Through the book, he wants people to “stand in that power and to feel the effect of the depths of our ancestry”.

When asked to highlight one other story in the Queer Georgians that he found particularly interesting, Delaney mentioned that of Ms Mary Jones, who was a Black trans woman living in New York in 1836.

“She is a sex worker and she is probably—I’m just basing it on the archival time span—she is probably the first free Black person in her family as well. So this is somebody who is redefining the contours of history.”

According to the author, Mary is many things. She is a thief, she’s trans, she’s a free person, “But she is also a survivor, and she also insists on her place in society, despite the fact that society would try to keep her down. She gets arrested I think 16 times… She’s trying to eke out a living in a world that very much wants to keep her down.”

He concluded, “It’s a very inspiring history. She’s the person that lingers with me…  The last image we get of her in the book is her walking down one of her roads in New York, and she’s dressed in her finery and her head is held high. And when those around her are not behaving with dignity and not behaving in very humane ways towards her, she is a pillar of dignity and she is the absolute embodiment of what it is to be a human being.”

If you want to read more about these fascinating histories, Queer Georgians, A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers and Homemakers is available to purchase here.

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