Women in Literature and Politics

Lot 3

ONLY KNOWN COPY OF THE ONLY BOOK BY THE REMARKABLE EVE ADAMS.

ADDAMS, EVELYN. [ADAMS, EVE; KOTCHEVER, EVA, PSEUD.]

Lesbian Love. [New York: Privately Printed, 1925.]

Remarkable Women Manuscripts and Memorabilia

22 March – 2 April 2024, 12:00 PDT

Online, Los Angeles

Sold for US$14,080 inc. premium

ONLY KNOWN COPY OF THE ONLY BOOK BY THE REMARKABLE EVE ADAMS.

ADDAMS, EVELYN. [ADAMS, EVE; KOTCHEVER, EVA, PSEUD.] Lesbian Love. [New York: Privately Printed, 1925.]
8vo. 4 original printed erotic illustrations, with 4 additional erotic photographs mounted to blank pages. Early cloth, printed title label pasted to upper cover, possibly the original front wrapper, hinges cracked, binding a bit loose.
Publications: Katz, Jonathan Ned, The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams, New York, 2021, for information on this copy.

THE ONLY KNOWN COPY OF THE EARLIEST DEPICTION OF LESBIAN COMMUNITY IN AMERICA. Eve Adams self-published her collection of stories, Lesbian Love, in February 1925 in an edition of just 150 copies. In 1926, her Greenwich Village "tea house" Eve's Hangout, one of the earliest lesbian & gay cafes in the village, was raided by police, and she was arrested for publishing an "indecent book." According to police transcripts, at the time of her arrest, she had only 10 copies left, all of which were confiscated and presumably destroyed. A year later, at her deportation hearings, her response was, "I admit having written a book entitled Lesbian Love, based on true acts and living characters of today ... I believe the book is not in any way immoral, indecent, or vulgar ... There is not one word in the whole book that is vulgar."

This remarkable work from a remarkable woman features nine short stories of "lesbian love" largely drawn from Adams's personal history, and many of the characters are identifiable from her past. These intimate portraits predate Radclyffe Hall's Well of Loneliness, widely considered to be the first explicitly lesbian novel, by three years.

Adams's arrest for an "indecent book" and a trumped-up charge of "disorderly conduct" led to a prison sentence of one year, the maximum allowable under the law for her "crime." Moreover, after serving her sentence she was deported, and not allowed to return to the U.S. The sentence and its resulting deportation were harsh by any standard of the time. Eve Adams, or Eva Kotchever, as the street in Paris named after her has it, was born in Poland as Chawa Złoczower. When she came to the United States in 1912 through Ellis Island, she soon met Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and Ben Reitman. Until 1919 when Goldman and Berkman faced their own deportation, Eve worked with them to help distribute subversive periodicals such as Mother Earth. By 1919, she had been labeled an agitator, and the FBI had begun investigating her. Most people believe that the FBI investigations of her radical activities played no small role in her arrest and its aftermath.

Returning first to Poland, she eventually landed in Paris, where she was known for distributing forbidden books on the streets, including the work of Henry Miller, who also bought books from her, as Alfred Perles relates in My Friend, Henry Miller. Beginning in 1934, Miller would slip her copies of Tropic of Cancer, which had already been banned in many countries, in order for her to distribute them along the Left Bank. In December 1943, Adams and her girlfriend Hella Soldner were arrested at their home in Nazi-occupied Nice. Within 5 days, they were taken on transport 63 to Auschwitz-Berkenow, and neither woman was ever heard from again.

Eve's amazing, tragic story was relegated to obscurity for many years. However, beginning with Barbara Kahn's 2010 off-Broadway play, "The Spring and Fall of Eve Adams," and its musical sequel, "Unreachable Eden," and culminating in scholar Jonathan Ned Katz's detailed 2021 biography The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams, for which he used this copy of Eve's book extensively, the remarkable story of Eva Kotchever, or Eve Adams, has finally, and deservedly, come to light. In 2021, the city of Paris named a street for her Rue Eva Kotchever, and 2022-3 saw another off-Broadway play of "The Great Lesbian Love of Eve Adams" by Paige Esterly. Eve Adams's Lesbian Love not only holds a prominent place of in the history of modern feminism and LGBQT literature but has helped to preserve and illuminate the remarkable life of its creator. An ebook and hardcover facsimile edition of the work are forthcoming from Cosmographia Books.

via https://www.bonhams.com/auction/29312/lot/3/only-known-copy-of-the-only-book-by-the-remarkable-eve-adams-addams-evelyn-adams-eve-kotchever-eva-pseud-lesbian-love-new-york-privately-printed-1925/