Man Into Woman: A Comparative Scholarly Edition

by Lili Elbe, Pamela L. Caughie (Editor), Erik Tonning (Editor)

In 1930 Danish artist Einar Wegener underwent a series of surgeries to live as Lili Ilse Elvenes (more commonly known as Lili Elbe). Her life story, Fra Mand til Kvinde (From Man to Woman), published in Copenhagen in 1931, is the first popular full-length (auto)biographical narrative of a subject who undergoes genital transformation surgery ( Genitalumwandlung ).

In Man Into A Comparative Scholarly Edition , Pamela L. Caughie and Sabine Meyer present the full text of the 1933 American edition of Elbe's work with comprehensive notes on textual and paratextual variants across the four published editions in three languages. This edition also includes a substantial scholarly introduction which situates the historical and intellectual context of Elbe's work, as well as new essays on the work by leading scholars in transgender studies and modernist literature, and critical coverage of the 2015 biopic, The Danish Girl .

This print edition has a digital the Lili Elbe Digital Archive (www.lilielbe.org). Launched on July 6, 2019, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science ( Institut für Sexualwissenschaft ) where Lili Elbe was initially examined, the Lili Elbe Digital Archive hosts the German typescript and all four editions of this narrative published in Danish, German, and English between 1931 and 1933, with English translations of the Danish edition and the typescript. Many letters from archives and contemporaneous articles noted in this print edition may be found in the digital archive.

322 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1931

About the author

Lili Ilse Elvenes, better known as Lili Elbe, was a Danish transgender woman and one of the first identifiable recipients of sex reassignment surgery. Elbe was born Einar Magnus Andreas Wegener and was a successful artist under that name. She also presented as Lili (sometimes spelled Lily) and was publicly introduced as Einar's sister. After transitioning, however, she made a legal name change to Lili Ilse Elvenes and stopped painting. It is highly likely that Elbe was an intersex person.

Reviews

[Ciaran Gardner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read for anyone interested in transgender narratives. So tragic but also so imperative (and MUCH better than the film The Danish Girl).

[Sara G · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If I should succumb spiritually and seek suicide, everybody would be right in saying that what had happened to me had been contrary to Nature, an audacious challenge of the unnatural and the artificial to the natural and to Nature; a creature born as an hermaphrodite must remain an hermaphrodite, especially if it has lived as an hermaphrodite for a lifetime. That without the operation performed by the Professor I should have died with Andreas more than a year ago does not trouble them.
But that I, Lili, am vital and have a right to life I have proved by living for fourteen months. It may be said that fourteen months is not much, but they seem to me like a whole and happy human life. The price which I have paid seems to me very small. [...]
If sooner or later I should succumb physically, I am quite reconciled. I shall at least have known what it is to live."