COLLIS, Rose 1959-

PERSONAL:

Born 1959, in Wimbledon, England.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 161 William Street, Floor 16, New York, NY 10038-2607.

CAREER:

Singer, songwriter, journalist, and writer.

WRITINGS:

Portraits to the Wall: Historic Lesbian Lives Unveiled, Cassell (London, England), 1994.

(Editor) Lesbian Pillow Book, HarperSanFrancisco (San Francisco, CA), 1995.

A Trouser-wearing Character: The Life and Times of Nancy Spain, Cassell (London, England), 1995.

k. d. lang, Absolute Classics/Oberon Books (Carlisle, England), 1999.

(Editor) Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2000.

Colonel Barker's Monstrous Regiment: A Tale of Female Husbandry, Virago Press (London, England), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS:

An activist and performer, Rose Collis has emerged as a wide-ranging chronicler of lesbian life and lives. In the Lesbian Pillow Book she brings together pictures, love letters, and other erotica in what a Lambda Book Report contributor called an "alluring mix." Her Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica draws on a broad range of writings and writers to cover the gamut of lesbian erotica "from platonic encounters to hardcore sex," according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

While editing these collections, Collis has become better known as an historian and biographer. In Portraits to the Wall: Historic Lesbian Lives Unveiled, "a wonderfully entertaining biographical volume" in the words of Lambda Book Report reviewer Teresa Ortega, Collis brings to life ten lesbians from the past 300 years of European history, including Queen Anne; Sarah Churchill, duchess of Marlborough; to Mercedes de Acosta, whose affairs with Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo once scandalized Hollywood; and lesser-known figures such as organic farming advocate Eve Balfour and composer Dame Ethel Smyth. The pieces are "short enough to read in one sitting—yet their very brevity compels one to read more," noted Ortega.

Collis has gone on to provide longer reads on a number of noted lesbians. In k.d. lang, part of the "Outlines" series of notable gay, lesbian, and bisexual artists, she covers the career of the performance artist-turned-singer who has become a lesbian icon. "Collis's writing is conversational in style but journalistic in tone, and unfortunately, she concentrates more on lang's music and performances than on her life," wrote Lambda Book Report reviewer Bill Greaves. Publishers Weekly contributor Sybil Steinberg found it "saucy yet affectionate."

Another Collis title dips back into the recent past, to the pre-Stonewall era when the vast majority of gays and lesbians lived firmly in the closet, hardly aware that there was any other option. A Trouser-wearing Character: The Life and Times of Nancy Spain, "sensitive, witty, exhaustively researched," in the words of Spectator reviewer Jonathan Cecil, tells the story of an exception to this rule, a woman well known as a celebrity journalist, broadcaster, and novelist, and an out lesbian, who died tragically in a plane crash in 1964. Collis takes the reader through Spain's genteel childhood, her career as a celebrity-chasing journalist and radio actress, and long-term relationship that didn't preclude numerous affairs. The book also covers Spain's feud with author Evelyn Waugh, and a subsequent libel suit in which Spain perjured herself but lost anyway. "Unlike her subject, Miss Collis is rarely inaccurate and never vulgar. Delightfully readable, with an unusually vivid sense of the recent past and its personalities, she is a biographer to watch," concluded Cecil.

In Colonel Barker's Monstrous Regiment: A Tale of Female Husbandry Collis reaches back to the early twentieth century, when gays were actively persecuted and some went to desperate extremes to live the sort of life they wanted. As Collis explains, "Colonel Barker" was born Lillias Irma Valerie Barker in 1895, to a genteel Jersey family. Valerie's traditional upbringing, including convent school and a debutante ball, was offset by days spent riding with her father, who also taught her cricket and boxing. As Collis shows, it was this "manly" side of life that really attracted her, and when World War I broke out, she threw herself into war work, where she met and married a hard-drinking Australian soldier named Harold Arkell Smith. The marriage lasted six weeks, and a subsequent relationship with another abusive drunkard convinced Barker that life as a woman was not much fun. She decided instead to become Colonel Victor Barker, dashing war hero and gentleman about town, which she carried off quite successfully. She even convinced her best friend Elfrida to marry her, agreeing to provide for Elfrida and her young son. Unfortunately, this proved less successful, and in 1929, Barker went bankrupt, and was arrested for fraud and perjury. A strip search at the jail turned a minor crime story into a major scandal, and newspapers eagerly played up all the lurid details, while Barker herself was sentenced to nine months for "outraging the decencies of nature." Unrepentent, she continued to take on male identities for the rest of her life. In addition to telling Barker's dramatic story, Collis intersperses other tales of "men-women" and italicized passages describing punishments historically visited on lesbians and transvestites.

Some found this distracting. A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote that Collis "continually interrupts the narrative with similar tales of women living as men that derail the main story's momentum." For Times Literary Supplement reviewer Anne Stevenson, these diversions "only rarely disturb the flow of this picturesque history of an endearing bounder—of whatever sex—who would do wonderfully as the hero/heroine of a full-blooded novel." "Collis recounts Barker's life with subtle humor and ardent curiosity.… Barker's story is often sad … but it is also gripping. If it were a novel, you'd never swallow it," concluded London Daily Telegraph reviewer Kathryn Hughes.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Daily Telegraph (London, England) June 9, 2001, Kathryn Hughes, review of Colonel Barker's Monstrous Regiment: A Tale of Female Husbandry, p. 12.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2002, review of Colonel Barker's Monstrous Regiment, p. 1746.

Lambda Book Report, January, 1995, Teresa Ortega, review of Portraits to the Wall: Historic Lesbian Lives Unveiled, p. 41; September, 1995, review of Lesbian Pillow Book, p. 48; February, 2000, Bill Greaves, review of k. d. lang, p. 22.

Publishers Weekly, September 20, 1999, Sybil Steinberg, review of k. d. lang, p. 68; June 12, 2000, Jeff Zaleski, review of The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica, p. 56.

Spectator (London, England) June 7, 1997, Jonathan Cecil, review of A Trouser-wearing Character, pp. 40-41.

Times Literary Supplement, July 20, 2001, Anne Stevenson, review of Colonel Barker's Monstrous Regiment, p. 12.*