Marion ‘Joe’ Carstairs was a powerhouse of wealth and refusal. She wore men’s clothes, raced boats, and eventually bought her own island—Whale Cay—where she played monarch to a private kingdom. She was a walking disruption, an heiress who spent her fortune building a life that had zero space for conventional femininity.
Summerscale doesn’t write a standard biography; she writes a dismantling of a myth. She tracks Carstairs’ transition from a Standard Oil heiress into a cross-dressing adventurer who kept a collection of dolls and surrounded herself with sycophants. It’s not just a story about being a lesbian; it’s a study in what happens when someone has enough money to opt out of gender, society, and reality itself.
It’s a portrait of an absolute original. Carstairs didn’t try to fit into the ‘lesbian community’ of her day—she bought an island to avoid it. It’s a messy, fascinating look at how extreme privilege and extreme gender non-conformity collided in the early 20th century. It’s about the cost of freedom when that freedom is bought with a massive inheritance.
Genre: Autobiography/Biography; Award Winner; History; Memoir
Subjects: Eccentrics And Eccentricities; Fiction / Historical; Landowners; Lesbians; Millionaires; Motorboat Racing; Whale Cay (Bahamas)
Publication History
| ISBN | 9781857023602 |
|---|---|
| Copyright Date | 1997 |
| Publication Date | 1997 |
| Publisher | Fourth Estate |
| Format | Hardcover |
| No. of Pages | 224 |
| Language | English |
| Notes | Winner, 1998 Somerset Maugham Award. Shortlisted, 1997 Whitbread Award for Biography. Biography of Marion 'Joe' Carstairs. |
| ISBN | 9780670880188 |
|---|---|
| Copyright Date | 1998 |
| Publication Date | May 1, 1998 |
| Publisher | Viking Adult |
| Format | Hardcover |
| No. of Pages | 256 |
| Language | English |
| Rating | Not Rated |
| ISBN | 9780007276660 |
|---|---|
| Copyright Date | 2008 |
| Publication Date | October 29, 2008 |
| Publisher | Harper Perennial |
| Format | Paperback |
| No. of Pages | 264 |
| Language | English |
Comment
The Queen of Whale Cay: The Eccentric Story of "Joe" Carstairs, Fastest Woman on Water, Kate Summerscale's first book, was published by Fourth Estate in 1997. Carstairs, born in 1900 and known as Joe, was a cross-dressing lesbian who became famous as a champion speedboat racer in the 1920s and later bought Whale Cay, an island in the Bahamas.
Summerscale began the book after receiving a letter in 1993 while she was writing obituaries for the Daily Telegraph, and she found that an obituary could not hold the life she uncovered. The book won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1998 and was shortlisted for the 1997 Whitbread Award for biography. Terry Castle reviewed it in the London Review of Books.
The biography rescued from obscurity one of the most flamboyant lesbian lives of the twentieth century, a woman who refused the conventions of her class and sex. It also launched Summerscale's career; her later book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher won the Samuel Johnson Prize.