From Syd McGinley
This is a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English. Etymologies are not definitions; they’re explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago.
The dates beside a word indicate the earliest year for which there is a surviving written record of that word (in English, unless otherwise indicated). This should be taken as approximate, especially before about 1700, since a word may have been used in conversation for hundreds of years before it turns up in a manuscript that has had the good fortune to survive the centuries.
Two links from Erastes:
hidden life of gay victorians
glbt objects in the Victoria and Albert – (disappointingly only 21!)
and some vintage cross dressers:
from the Bilerico project, a young male impersonator
and from the blog A Gender Variance Who’s Who, Ross Hamilton as Marjorie