Love's Joy and Sorrow Between Women

A Rediscovered Classic of LGBTQ+ Literature. Translated and Annotated.

A banned novel. A lost author. A love story that refused to stay buried.

When Love's Joy and Sorrow Between Women was originally published in Berlin in 1895, it was immediately banned under Germany’s strict obscenity laws. Its author, Emilie Knopf, was tried twice and fined for distributing it. Then the book vanished — until a single surviving copy was found in a Berlin archive. Now the world gets to read her story for the first time.

Meet Felicita: artist, romantic, and unapologetic lover of women. Her great love is Edita, a musician from a Rhine castle, and their relationship is the beating heart of this witty, warm, and surprisingly modern novel. But Felicita's eye has a tendency to wander — toward a scheming French comtesse, an alluring blonde in a green velvet dress, and the glittering, dangerous world of late 19th-century European society.

Part love story, part social comedy, part moral drama — and entirely unlike anything else written in its time — Love's Joy and Sorrow Between Women is a novel that deserved a century of readers it never got. Now it finally has a chance.

This edition features:

• First complete English translation
• Chapter-by-chapter summaries
• Historical notes
• Full introduction.

Perfect for:

• Readers of classic and historical literary fiction
• Fans of lesbian/sapphic fiction and LGBTQ+ romance
• Fans of forbidden love stories and hidden histories
• Readers interested in 19th-century European social history
• Anyone who loved The Price of Salt, Fingersmith, The Well of Loneliness, Tipping the Velvet
• Readers of Sarah Waters, Jeanette Winterson, and Emma Donoghue
• Book clubs exploring underrepresented voices in literary history
• Collectors of annotated and scholarly editions of rare texts