Emilie Knopf

Very little biographical information about Emilie Knopf has been confirmed in the sources I found. What is clear is that she is credited as the author of Der Liebe Lust und Leid der Frau zur Frau, a German novel published in 1895 and described by lesbian history sources as the earliest known German-language lesbian novel.

The book appeared anonymously and later became the subject of obscenity proceedings; sources state that Knopf was tried twice and fined for distributing it. A modern publisher also notes that the novel survived in only a single known copy in a Berlin archive before being rediscovered and brought back into print.

That makes Knopf an unusually elusive figure in literary history: an author known less through a documented life story than through one remarkable, controversial book. Even with so many details still missing, her work has gained new attention because it preserves an early and unusually direct portrayal of desire between women at the end of the nineteenth century.