Oxford LibGuides: LGBTQ+ History Resources: Subculture

Key Resources

Drag (magazine)
"Drag was a magazine published throughout the 1970s and 1980s by Lee's Mardi Gras Enterprises, Inc. This collection contains 29 issues published between 1971 and 1983 and a special supplement edition published in 1975. Each issue of the magazine generally includes a mix of articles, editorials, and photo spreads of drag queens."
Fanny and Stella: Piecing together LGBTQ+ histories and telling the stories
This blog post, published by The National Archives, draws on archival material to piece together the lives of Fanny and Stella, two cross dressing Victorian theatrical performers who were arrested for buggery.
Mary, Queen of Drag?
"In today’s blog, Queer Artist and Academic, Daniel Fountain, explores the significance of drag in celebrating identity and Scottish heritage, as well as the enduring iconography associated with Mary, Queen of Scots."
Mother Camp Female: Impersonators in America
This book, originally published in 1972, explores drag culture in the US at that time. The author spent two years doing field research, immersing herself in the world of drag. This book is available to borrow from the Vere Harmsworth Library.
Rewind Fast Forward
"REWIND FAST FORWARD is a unique archive of Liverpool’s music, club and fashion sub-cultures and the intersections with local LGBT and BAME history." This website contains a number of videos of drag performances from the Liverpool scene.

18th Century Molly Houses – London’s Gay Subculture
This is a blog post about molly houses, which were coffee houses or taverns in which gay men could meet and socialise. It focuses on what items in The British Newspaper Archive can tell us about these places.
In the Life
This is an online archive containing material relevant to 'In the Life', an American television newsmagazine programme that ran from 1992 to 2012 and focused on LGBTQ+ issues. It contains a number of episodes of the programme.
Miss Muff's molly house in Whitechapel
This blog post is about a 'molly house' in London in the 18th century. Molly houses were coffee houses or taverns in which gay men could meet and socialise. They formed part of a gay subculture at a time when homosexual acts were illegal.
QZAP Zine Archive
"The Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) was first launched in November 2003 in an effort to preserve queer zines and make them available to other queers, researchers, historians, punks, and anyone else who has an interest DIY publishing and underground queer communities."