Merlínová, Lída (e.g. Pecháčková, 1906–1988) and V[ladimír] Sychra, artist.

[THE FIRST CZECH LESBIAN NOVEL] Vyhnanci lásky: román [Exiles of love: a novel]. Faun, svazek 1 [Faun series, vol. 1].

Prague: A. Král, 1929. Small octavo (16.5 × 12 cm). Contemporary blue half cloth over marbled boards; preserving pictorial front wrapper; gilt title to spine; 134, [2] pp. Light wear to boards; private owner stamp to half title; resized to binding; still good or better. Item #55686

First edition, very rare, of the first novel by Merlínová (pseudonym of L. Pecháčková), which is widely considered the first Czech Lesbian novel. The plot centers on two women, Helena and Tetua, whose relationship develops into a close romantic bond as they navigate uncertainty about their identity and dissatisfaction with heterosexual relationships. The experience remains ambivalent, as the two are forced to hide their relationship due to the social stigma attached to homosexual relations at the time.

Merlínová married the composer Cyril Pecháček in the late 1920s, while authoring numerous homoerotic works of fiction during the 1920–30s. After her husband's death, she lived with a female partner until her death in 1988. Her work is the subject of a recent research project at the University of Southampton: "Homosexuality in Czech culture and society is only recently being explored by Czech historians and usually the focus is on the homosexual male. This research project focuses instead on Czech lesbians during the period 1918–1945 and especially the work of the popular (yet now largely unknown writer) Lída Merlínová. In 1929 she published the first lesbian novel in Czech, Exiles of Love (Vyhnanci lásky), in a print run of 4000 which quickly sold out. In the 1930s she went on to write for the homosexual journal Voice of the Sexual Minority, and to publish a series of ‘women’s novels’ and books for adolescent girls. The purpose of the research project is to analyse with an eye on their portrayal of lesbian identities; to set them against other ‘racier’ novels such as The Third Sex by Gil Sedlačková (1937); and to provide a fuller picture of what it could mean to live the life of a lesbian in interwar Czechoslovakia and in the years of the Nazi Protectorate. Since all Merlínová’s works were put on the Communist index in 1948, many are missing from Czech libraries, yet her writings are an undiscovered part of the ‘lesbian cannon’ which deserves integration into a new European history of gender and sexuality" (see http://lgbtresearchcommunity.soton.ac.uk/project/exiles-of-love-lida-merlinova-and-the-world-of-the-czech-lesbian/).

With the striking drawn wrappers by Vladimír Sychra.

As of April 2026, KVK, OCLC only show two copies, one at the Czech National Library and one in North America.

Price: €800.00

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