Nights in Fairyland

Nyhet

Gossip, Blackmail, and the Many Lives of “Broadway Brevities”

Häftad, Engelska, 2026

319 kr

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In 1925 the publishers of Broadway Brevities were tried for running an extortion operation targeting New York’s social and cultural elites. While the first version of the magazine whispered gossip in columnists’ suggestive innuendo, later incarnations shouted bold accusations in graphic tabloid headlines. On the pages of Broadway Brevities gossip was instrumentalized and urbanized, taking its place among the noisy, sensational features of city life.The life of the magazine’s long-time editor, Canadian-born Stephen G. Clow, runs through this story, connecting the different incarnations of the magazine and the circles in which they were published (in New York, 1917–34, and later in Toronto). Clow’s career took him from Manhattan’s literary world, in his role as a critic and book publisher, to notoriety as a scandal-mongering editor. Beginning in the 1920s Clow gathered – or fabricated – allegations about high-profile people in theatre, cinema, and enterprise, then threatened to publish unless they paid up. Clow would brag to Time magazine that he was “the most famous and wicked blackmailer in world history.” Broadway Brevities became infamous for sensational, vicious, and lurid coverage of gay life. Despite its mocking homophobia, Will Straw shows, the magazine can today help reconstitute the spaces and places of historical queer life in New York.Drawing on a singular collection of Brevities issues discovered over decades of research, Nights in Fairyland is a rich account of an overlooked form of periodical publishing and of urban nightlife, queer sociability, and the commodification of gossip in the 1920s and 1930s.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2026-02-17
Mått152 x 229 x 18 mm
Vikt454 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor296
FörlagMcGill-Queen's University Press
ISBN9780228026594

Tillhör följande kategorier

Figures / ixPreface / xiAcknowledgments / xviiNote from the Author / xxiIntroduction / 31 Stephen G. Clow: His Early Years and Literary Ambitions / 92 Queer Coteries: New York and Hollywood / 363 Nights in Fairyland: Investigating Queer Nightlife / 534 The Dirty Work of Blackmail / 815 Brevities on Trial / 1006 The New Broadway Brevities / 1197 Tabloid Brevities / 1428 The New York Magazine Landscape of the Early 1930s / 1699 Broadway Brevities in Canada / 208Conclusion: The Shifting Terrains of Media Gossip / 223Notes / 231Index / 269

“The exciting tale of an archetypal gossipmonger with nine lives and the many magazines he published, Nights in Fairyland fizzes with cultural histories that tickle your tongue as you sip the main story with unusual anticipation.” - Paul Moore, co-author of The Sunday Paper: A Media History "Will Straw is the world’s leading expert on Broadway Brevities, a tabloid whose news and gossip columns chronicled essential queer history that would otherwise be lost. This is a book I have long been waiting for, the indispensable study of an important source." - Hugh Ryan, author of When Brooklyn Was Queer "Nights in Fairyland is an awe-inspiring work of primary research. Straw unearths entirely novel sources in the Brevities periodicals: widely circulated and influential in their time, they now exist as rare print artifacts that were never collected or archived and have been almost entirely neglected in print culture histories until now. By examining Stephen G. Clow's career, his networks, his magazines, and their imitators, the book documents the rise of the night-life column. Along the way, it elucidates all kinds of unexpected links: between literary circles in Greenwich Village and sensational journalism, between anti-fascism and tabloid publishing, and between Hollywood scandal and New York queer subcultures." - Faye Hammill, University of Glasgow

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