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Diana: A Strange Autobiography
This is the unusual and compelling story of Diana, a tantalizingly beautiful woman who sought love in the strange by-paths of Lesbos. Fearless and outspoken, it dares to reveal that hidden world where perfumed caresses and half-whispered endearments constitute the forbidden fruits in a Garden of Eden where men are never accepted.
This is how A Strange Autobiography was described when it was published in paperback in 1952. The original 1939 hardcover edition carried with it a Publisher's This is the autobiography of a woman who tried to be normal.
In the book, Diana is presented as the unexceptional daughter of an unexceptional plutocratic family. During adolescence, she finds herself drawn with mysterious intensity to a girl friend. The narrative follows Diana's progress through college; a trial marriage that proves she is incapable of heterosexuality; intellectual and sexual education in Europe; and a series of lesbian relationships culminating in a final tormented triangular struggle with two other women for the individual salvation to be found in a happy couple.
In her introduction, Julie Abraham argues that Diana is not really an autobiography at all, but a deliberate synthesis of different archetypes of this confessional genre, echoing, as it does, more than a half-dozen novels. Hitting all the high and low points of the lesbian novel, the book, Abraham illustrates, offers a defense of lesbian relationships that was unprecedented in 1939 and radical for decades afterwards.
This is how A Strange Autobiography was described when it was published in paperback in 1952. The original 1939 hardcover edition carried with it a Publisher's This is the autobiography of a woman who tried to be normal.
In the book, Diana is presented as the unexceptional daughter of an unexceptional plutocratic family. During adolescence, she finds herself drawn with mysterious intensity to a girl friend. The narrative follows Diana's progress through college; a trial marriage that proves she is incapable of heterosexuality; intellectual and sexual education in Europe; and a series of lesbian relationships culminating in a final tormented triangular struggle with two other women for the individual salvation to be found in a happy couple.
In her introduction, Julie Abraham argues that Diana is not really an autobiography at all, but a deliberate synthesis of different archetypes of this confessional genre, echoing, as it does, more than a half-dozen novels. Hitting all the high and low points of the lesbian novel, the book, Abraham illustrates, offers a defense of lesbian relationships that was unprecedented in 1939 and radical for decades afterwards.
282 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1939
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
April 10, 2022
"This is the unusual and compelling story of Diana, a tantalizingly beautiful woman who sought love in the strange by-paths of Lesbos. Fearless and outspoken, it dares to reveal that hidden world where perfumed caresses and half-whispered endearments constitute the forbidden fruits in a Garden of Eden where men are never accepted..."
So, apparently, started the blurb on the back of the first paperback edition of this trailblazing American lesbian autobiography from 1939, but nothing could be further from the truth. "Diana" (not her real name) comes across as a cerebral, career-minded teacher who loves French and German literature and aspires to become a writer. But she discovers she has a problem to deal with: she's a lesbian. Men don't attract her, some women do. Rather than staying in the closet, she decides to do something about it and have a satisfying life.
The book is not prurient at all, there is hardly anything explicit. It's really a story about courage. "Diana" reads up on lesbianism, both in literature and in psychology, and ascertains that there are plenty of people like her. She is at first reluctant to put theory into practice, but after a while decides she has to go with her natural inclinations. It's complicated - well, relationships are often complicated, and the fact that they have to be clandestine doesn't help. But she does her best to act decently and rationally, and in the end things, more or less, sort themselves out.
As far as I can see, she wrote the book to help other young women who were as confused as she was. She is not a good prose stylist, and eighty years later the psychology (Freud and Jung) seems quaintly dated. But it was what she had available, and she made it work for her. She comes across as an inspiring person. Go "Diana"!
February 26, 2017
I came across Diana: A Strange Autobiography because it was the oldest looking book on the gay/lesbian shelf of Charlottesville's premier used bookstore. (Daedalus Books, not that there's any doubt.) It was copyright 1939, had a really foxy drawing of a woman embracing herself on the title page, and chapter titles like "Am I a Lesbian?", "I am a Lesbian!" and "Jane the Huntress." Most interesting at first glance, though, was the Introduction written by a Victor Robinson, MD who explains the book is "the confession of one who was destined by Nature to gather forbidden fruit in the gardens of deviation, and who saved her life from frustration by knowing herself." Doctor Robinson firmly plants himself in the 'nature' camp, asserting that lesbianism is "not a question of ethics, but of endocrines," and reassures readers that reading Diana's hot tale of lesbian love will not lure any ladies over to the other side. "There is no danger that the woman biologically craving the male, will seek that strange light," he writes. "Only the sisterhood enters to remain, and those who are borne here on the hormonic tides of inversion, cannot by laws or maxims or ostracism, be kept from that dark temple."
On the very next page, Diana stakes a claim for the 'nuture' camp, writing in her author's forward that "my lesbianism is, I believe, the result of long environment peculiarly fitted to foster whatever inclination to homosexuality I had as a child." She remains firmly on the nuture side of the debate for the entirety of the book. After all, it was the 1930s and Freud and Jung were the freshest ideas around. For the author, it seems that understanding homosexuality as an acquired quality rather than one present from birth (Dr Robinson's endocrines) was more liberatory. She explains that thinking of homosexuality as an innate quality made her feel like a "freak of nature" and understanding it as a product of her upbringing was preferable. It's quite a different sentiment than we are used to now, and one of the many reasons why this book is such an invaluable contribution to understanding queer history and thought.
Diana: A Strange Autobiography is so fun to read. There were literally hundreds of sentences I wanted to highlight because they were so charming and great. The story is also quite pulpy at times, so much so that I doubted its authenticity at first. I should note here that I bought my copy of the book three or four years ago, and read the first chapters then, before the episode of PBS' History Detectives revealed that book was, in fact, written by an honest to god lesbian, though most scholars of the book treat it as a novel that skillfully plays with archetype rather than as a pure memoir, whatever that is.
Perhaps most shocking for contemporary readers is that a book published in 1939 would not only be unabashedly unashamed of lesbianism, but would also contain numerous and beautifully honest accounts of her physical relationships. Most heartbreaking for contemporary readers is how many of the problems Diana faces are still so current, reminding us how much prejudice remains to be struggled against. It's not much of a giveaway to say the book ends on a happy note, with Diana in a fulfilling relationship. And the description of the book's actual author, Frances V. Rummell, by her niece, is equally positive. "She was a very bright woman. I think she enjoyed life. She was a big personality. She came into the room, you knew she was there. I was very fond of her."
On the very next page, Diana stakes a claim for the 'nuture' camp, writing in her author's forward that "my lesbianism is, I believe, the result of long environment peculiarly fitted to foster whatever inclination to homosexuality I had as a child." She remains firmly on the nuture side of the debate for the entirety of the book. After all, it was the 1930s and Freud and Jung were the freshest ideas around. For the author, it seems that understanding homosexuality as an acquired quality rather than one present from birth (Dr Robinson's endocrines) was more liberatory. She explains that thinking of homosexuality as an innate quality made her feel like a "freak of nature" and understanding it as a product of her upbringing was preferable. It's quite a different sentiment than we are used to now, and one of the many reasons why this book is such an invaluable contribution to understanding queer history and thought.
Diana: A Strange Autobiography is so fun to read. There were literally hundreds of sentences I wanted to highlight because they were so charming and great. The story is also quite pulpy at times, so much so that I doubted its authenticity at first. I should note here that I bought my copy of the book three or four years ago, and read the first chapters then, before the episode of PBS' History Detectives revealed that book was, in fact, written by an honest to god lesbian, though most scholars of the book treat it as a novel that skillfully plays with archetype rather than as a pure memoir, whatever that is.
Perhaps most shocking for contemporary readers is that a book published in 1939 would not only be unabashedly unashamed of lesbianism, but would also contain numerous and beautifully honest accounts of her physical relationships. Most heartbreaking for contemporary readers is how many of the problems Diana faces are still so current, reminding us how much prejudice remains to be struggled against. It's not much of a giveaway to say the book ends on a happy note, with Diana in a fulfilling relationship. And the description of the book's actual author, Frances V. Rummell, by her niece, is equally positive. "She was a very bright woman. I think she enjoyed life. She was a big personality. She came into the room, you knew she was there. I was very fond of her."
January 14, 2016
A novel in desperate need of further exploration and consideration both by myself and others. Written by Diana Frederics (a pseudonym, but that’s a whole separate, utterly fascinating story in and of itself)!) and published in 1939 by the Citadel Press, just a glance through the chapter names listed in the table of contents announces its disarmingly forthright approach towards its so-called “strange” content: “Am I A Lesbian?,” “‘I Am A Lesbian!’,” “Leslie and I Become Lovers,” etc. Throughout The Well of Loneliness Radclyffe Hall embroiders her representation of lesbian desires and lives with–and ultimately deadening—metaphors and other explicit literary devices; Diana resolutely opts for the opposite tack. Consider:
Well yes, not exactly a final pronouncement that jibes easily within our contemporary rhetoric of relentless pro-queer self affirmation, but I will attest that after reading so many books from this period –and let’s be frank, from all eras—where this same realization is accompanied by utter despair followed by a quick, inevitably sad downward spiral, the clear-eyed, no-nonsense attitude displayed by Diana’s eponymous subject had nothing less than a lightening effect on me.
With a rather spare, declarative style, it doesn’t take that long for Diana to pragmatically grasp evaluate the facts of her life and then set forth to make the best of things. And while there are inevitable complications along the way, she does manage to do pretty darn well for herself, and the fact that the concluding chapter of the novel is titled “Fulfillment” says quite lot. If this perspective came as a bit of a happy shock for me in 2014, I can only imagine its effect on a similarly sympathetic reader in 1939.
The few scholarly considerations I’ve been able to find regarding Diana, most particularly Julie Abraham’s introduction to a 1995 reprinting by the NYU Press, take a surprisingly critical stance toward the novel, tending to focus on what the novel is not as opposed to the many things it is. But for my part, Diana was surely one of the great revelations of my reading year.
[Originally written for a post about "Reading Queerly in 2014" over at my blog, Queer Modernisms.]
“With this acknowledgment of my homosexuality I discovered myself; now I had something to go on. It was like being born all over again, and the relief I felt astonished me. I had, so to speak, nothing left to be worried about. My fears were all confirmed… I was determined to respect myself for what I was, lesbianism be damned.”
Well yes, not exactly a final pronouncement that jibes easily within our contemporary rhetoric of relentless pro-queer self affirmation, but I will attest that after reading so many books from this period –and let’s be frank, from all eras—where this same realization is accompanied by utter despair followed by a quick, inevitably sad downward spiral, the clear-eyed, no-nonsense attitude displayed by Diana’s eponymous subject had nothing less than a lightening effect on me.
With a rather spare, declarative style, it doesn’t take that long for Diana to pragmatically grasp evaluate the facts of her life and then set forth to make the best of things. And while there are inevitable complications along the way, she does manage to do pretty darn well for herself, and the fact that the concluding chapter of the novel is titled “Fulfillment” says quite lot. If this perspective came as a bit of a happy shock for me in 2014, I can only imagine its effect on a similarly sympathetic reader in 1939.
The few scholarly considerations I’ve been able to find regarding Diana, most particularly Julie Abraham’s introduction to a 1995 reprinting by the NYU Press, take a surprisingly critical stance toward the novel, tending to focus on what the novel is not as opposed to the many things it is. But for my part, Diana was surely one of the great revelations of my reading year.
[Originally written for a post about "Reading Queerly in 2014" over at my blog, Queer Modernisms.]
January 3, 2022
A former friend of mine lent this to me to read because she bought it at a used bookstore since it was called Diana. About a year later, we were In Provincetown during the July 4th week with our girlfriends and I happened across another copy in an antique store and bought it for myself for my birthday!
I love this woman’s journey from all the way back in 1939. She is my icon, in a way. And it has a happy ending, which, would have been extremely hard to accept back then for conservative Americans. Coming out for me was never easy ever.
I love this woman’s journey from all the way back in 1939. She is my icon, in a way. And it has a happy ending, which, would have been extremely hard to accept back then for conservative Americans. Coming out for me was never easy ever.
April 30, 2019
I probably could have just read the chapter titles of this book and called it a day. For example:
Chapter: I Meet Leslie
Next chapter: Leslie and I Become Lovers
I wanted to read this because I heard it had a happy ending, though written in 1939. And yeah... Diana and her final girlfriend don't die, but it's hard to root for them. Diana is fine, but all her lovers are a terrible bunch. I might give this a 2.5, since in the context of gay history there were moments of interest, but a lot of the time I was fighting boredom.
Chapter: I Meet Leslie
Next chapter: Leslie and I Become Lovers
I wanted to read this because I heard it had a happy ending, though written in 1939. And yeah... Diana and her final girlfriend don't die, but it's hard to root for them. Diana is fine, but all her lovers are a terrible bunch. I might give this a 2.5, since in the context of gay history there were moments of interest, but a lot of the time I was fighting boredom.
February 25, 2019
Complicado de calificar. La verdad es que no está muy bien escrito y es muy melodramático; un novelón entretenido. PERO, cuando se revisa el contexto en que está escrito (época y temática) sube mucho puntos sólo por haber sido escrito -y publicado- y, también, por ser un sincero reflejo del horror de ser gay en aquella época.
August 12, 2024
2,5 estrelles.
Mira que tenia ganes de donar-li una oportunitat i vaig començar-lo de bona gana, però quin esgotament!
Mira que tenia ganes de donar-li una oportunitat i vaig començar-lo de bona gana, però quin esgotament!
July 13, 2011
Like most people who've ever heard of this book, I first learned of it on the PBS TV show, The History Detectives, where an original edition of it was featured on an episode. I'm a big HD fan & this was an excellent episode; in the course of trying to discover the true author of Diana, Tufuku exasperatedly explains to viewers that gays and lesbians experienced uncalled for amounts of discrimination in mid-20th century America. Discrimination! I was curious about this 1939 book that somehow avoided offing its lesbian lead character in tragic murder or suicide, as many books in this genre would do for decades to come. Possibly thanks to the HD exposure, a new edition of Diana was released recently. When a good friend and fellow HD fan gave me a copy for Christmas, I was excited, but also a little hesitant; just because a book is historically interesting doesn't mean it is well written. But as a novel, it turned out not to be half bad. And it is worlds ahead of its time in showing a self aware lesbian hero in a positive light.
January 27, 2012
It's really amazing how far society can advance in terms of acceptance (and still has so far to go) and how our understanding of the human psyche has evolved. This was fascinating from an historic perspective, as a time capsule on a certain time and when certain theories held sway. It made me wonder how our own cultural production in 60 years will be viewed and whether those readers will see this moment as quaint, confused, and even a little bit pitiful.
April 1, 2023
I saw that there were thirteen reviews for this book and was quite excited, and then disappointed to see that people had merely left stars, not actual opinions. I purchased my copy of this book at The Old Toronto Paper Show many years ago, this rough little brown book with no dust jacket sitting in a pile of postcards. I still have it. I have read it many times. I cannot find any information about the author. Under this name at least, they only wrote one book. I would love to know who Diana Frederics was.
October 30, 2024
Lesbians are so messy
June 6, 2025
Interesting, especially for its time. Almost reads like a novel.
March 6, 2013
Published in 1939, Diana: A Strange Autobiography is both amazingly outdated and amazingly refreshing in its portrayal of one lesbian's life. Full of passages that both calmed and frightened me, the book never once released its hold. The stuff that either saddened or shocked, thankfully, no longer is believed by most sensible people today (i.e. insulting and downright false stereotypes about gay women). What surprised me the most, though, was how much still applies today (the need, for instance, to hide who you really are from your own family.)
There are both reflections and actual incidents from the book that speak to the reader's heart. Our narrator realizes she has feelings for a fellow student and begins rearranging her schedule so she doesn't bump into her. She does everything possible to avoid placing herself in situations where she could make Ruth (the girl she likes) feel uncomfortable or make herself fall even harder. How many of us (really, our sexuality doesn't matter here) immediately try and squelch our true feelings when we like someone we know we shouldn't? Lots, of course, but when you read of Diana's experiences you feel as if no one has ever captured how you feel quite like she does.
Diana believes the most antiquated things about homosexuality, which isn't surprising considering the author was writing this in the 1930s. For every nutty idea (women are gay because they're brought up around boys growing up or lesbians just cannot stay in a committed relationship) there is a counter idea that is simply lovely and yet sensible at the same time:
"If love ever came to me, I would accept it. If it did not, my life would not be frustrated. Love, I would remember, was only one of many things, and sometimes, a very small one...I was sick of thoughts made of hope."
As it turns out, Diana ends up discovering a lot of what she believed about lesbians and love to be wrong. She struggles with loneliness and a broken heart for a long time before she finds the closest thing to a happy ending...a particularly unique thing for way back then. :)
There are both reflections and actual incidents from the book that speak to the reader's heart. Our narrator realizes she has feelings for a fellow student and begins rearranging her schedule so she doesn't bump into her. She does everything possible to avoid placing herself in situations where she could make Ruth (the girl she likes) feel uncomfortable or make herself fall even harder. How many of us (really, our sexuality doesn't matter here) immediately try and squelch our true feelings when we like someone we know we shouldn't? Lots, of course, but when you read of Diana's experiences you feel as if no one has ever captured how you feel quite like she does.
Diana believes the most antiquated things about homosexuality, which isn't surprising considering the author was writing this in the 1930s. For every nutty idea (women are gay because they're brought up around boys growing up or lesbians just cannot stay in a committed relationship) there is a counter idea that is simply lovely and yet sensible at the same time:
"If love ever came to me, I would accept it. If it did not, my life would not be frustrated. Love, I would remember, was only one of many things, and sometimes, a very small one...I was sick of thoughts made of hope."
As it turns out, Diana ends up discovering a lot of what she believed about lesbians and love to be wrong. She struggles with loneliness and a broken heart for a long time before she finds the closest thing to a happy ending...a particularly unique thing for way back then. :)
January 20, 2013
To be continued--
This was a fascinating novel. Diana provided an entirely new facet to my understanding of the homosexual intellectual and emotional experience. Diana was undoubtedly introspective and wise beyond her years.
The reader witnessed a woman who slowly came out to herself and to those whom were close to her. This was no easy feat.
This was a fascinating novel. Diana provided an entirely new facet to my understanding of the homosexual intellectual and emotional experience. Diana was undoubtedly introspective and wise beyond her years.
The reader witnessed a woman who slowly came out to herself and to those whom were close to her. This was no easy feat.
August 23, 2010
if you can handle the content, it's very interesting!
August 28, 2010
This book was interesting to read...I reserved it from the library after seeing it on History Detectives on PBS. It was pretty good.
January 13, 2013
I have the 1939 edition.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews