ANGELS

-- Dr Gafia's Fan Terms

An archaic fan term, borrowed from the legitimate theater, used to describe the “patrons” who supported them with grant-sized donations that enabled them to function at enough of a profit to continue without charging ruinous admissions or requiring that the actors, writers and stage crew starve to death. With regard to fandom, in the 1940s and through the 1950s, “angels” tended to be fanzine patrons who provided sufficient cash to individual fan editors to finance, for example, a lithographed cover or something else equally special. The act of carrying out this practice was called “angeling” and one would say that a fanzine with such a benefactor had been “angeled.”